Kiss of death: Does mouth to mouth put lives at risk?

It may be called the kiss of life, but mouth-to-mouth resuscitation could actually be anything but.

According to experts, the treatment can in fact hinder heart attack patients’ chances of survival. 

Under current advice, when a patient’s heart stops, first-aiders are told to give 30 chest compressions followed by two breaths into the mouth.

Doctors are so concerned they are calling for the technique to be left out of CPR guidelines for the condition.

This technique is widely taught in schools, offices and to those who help at big sporting events.

But U.S. researchers say giving mouth-to-mouth actually interrupts time which should be spent on chest compressions to keep blood flowing round the body. 

If patients are only given chest compressions, survival rates increase by a fifth, they found.

Dr Peter Nagele, of Washington University School of Medicine, in St Louis, said: ‘Our findings support the idea that emergency medical services dispatch should instruct bystanders to focus on chest-compression-only CPR in adults with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.’

Although CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, will not restart a heart, it ensures the patient is kept alive by pumping blood around the body to crucial organs.

This is why compressions have to be carried out until an ambulance arrives. Once a victim reaches hospital doctors try to restart their heart with a defibrillator, which delivers an electric shock.

In a study published in the Lancet, the researchers found patients given CPR without mouth-to-mouth had a 22 per cent higher survival rate than those where the technique was included.

However, mouth-to-mouth shouldn’t be removed from the first-aid repertoire altogether, as it can still be effective if a patient stops breathing, but their heart is still beating.

This could include those who are choking, are near to drowning, victims of carbon-monoxide poisoning or those who have taken a drug overdose.

Previous surveys have found that many first-aiders are put off resuscitation as they do not want to give mouth-to-mouth to a stranger.

Although the treatment is an important part of first-aid training, heart attack victims given CPR have just a 10 per cent chance of surviving until they reach hospital. But this trebles their chances when compared to patients who have no resuscitation at all.