When a person is unconscious and not breathing and continues to look pale or blue-faced in spite of your mouth-to-mouth breathing, it means that his heart may also have stopped beating. If so, you must start massage along with mouth-to-mouth breathing. 1. Lay down the person on the back on the floor or a hard surface.
2. Kneel beside him facing his chest.
3. Place the heel of one hand over the lower half of his breast bone. The breast bone lies in the mid-line on the front of his chest. It extends from mid-point between the two collar bones at the base of the neck to the pit of the stomach.
4. Move yourself forwards over the his body so that your shoulders are directly over his breast bone.
5. Keeping your arm straight and without sending at the elbow, press down on the breast bone.
6. Repeat the chest compression at a rate of about 80-100 per minute.
7. After every five chest compressions, stop and give him one mouth-to-mouth breathing.
8. Continue the cycle of these two combined procedures, i.e., five chest compressions followed by one mouth-to-mouth breathing.
9. If another pair of hands is available, do the heart massage and he can do mouth-to-mouth breathing in the above manner. You should temporarily stop doing chest compression when your help does the mouth-to-mouth breathing.
10. Once the heart has started beating, keep on the mouth-to-mouth breathing till the child himself starts breathing.
11. Place the child in 'recovery' position and watch him carefully.
Heart Massage for the Babies less than Two Years Old
The basic procedure for doing heart massage is the same as for older children but with the following differences:
1. The pressure to the baby's chest is applied with two fingers (middle and index) and not with the heel of the hand.
2. Less force is used to avoid injury to lungs and ribs. The chest is compressed by about to 1 inch only.
3. The fingers used for compression are placed over the middle portion of the breast bone and not at its lower part. You can use an imaginary line joining the two nipples on the child's breast as a guide.
4. Chest compressions are done at a faster rate of 100 times per minute. Mouth-to-mouth breathing is done once after every five chest compressions as usual.
