RE: Animal 'first responders'

Thomas Johnson — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 12:50:39 GMT

[quote user="Niall Taylor"]

A mate sent me this link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-northern-ireland-43865467/how-to-perform-cpr-on-a-dog

Is this a gimmick to separate caring yet gullible owners from their cash or does it serve a genuine need?

In my humble opinion it (CPR and the whole animal 'first responder' concept) just gives false hope. In human medicine, where someone has had a heart attack (i.e. myocardial infarction (MI)) then CPR can help until someone arrives with a defibrillator to restart the heart (although with no breathing or heart beat your chances of survival are slim).

Dogs don't get MI though, and that's the problem for me. If they have stopped breathing and have no pulse then it's going to be a completely different situation, there will be something else which has caused the problem (trauma, neoplasia, organ failure etc), for which human first-aid type CPR is no use. The best thing to do in those circumstances surely is to get the dog into a car and take it to a vet - staying in one spot while you do chest compressions and artificial respiration is a waste of time. But to most vets a dog who is not breathing and doesn't have a pulse would be considered deceased - there really would be no realistic chance of doing anything other than advising an owner of this.

What does everyone else think? Do we have anyone in the group who has worked with a 'first responder'?

[/quote]

I completely agree, the only time I can think of when it might be useful would be a dog that has fallen into water and was drowning?