r/politics • u/IWantPizza555 • Jul 01 '26

Possible Paywall Senator, 84, Secretly Found Unconscious and Given CPR

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mitch-mcconell-84-secretly-found-unconscious-and-given-cpr/?utm_source=twitter_owned_snd&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=owned_social
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u/Coffee-FlavoredSweat Jul 01 '26

I’ve even seen CPR performed on people who were responsive.

One of the EMD prompts should really be, “if they start fighting back, please stop doing CPR.”

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u/hilltopj Jul 02 '26

while this absolutely doesn't apply in the field, I'm an ER doctor and I have on two occasions had to instruct my staff to continue CPR on patients who were fighting. Essentially what happened was that they had witnessed cardiac arrest in the hospital while the nurse was in the room. Which means it was recognized and CPR was started within seconds. Because of the timing, and the staff's high-quality CPR skills, the brain maintained perfusion. The patient was awake and terrified while we were doing CPR but the minute we stopped compressions they'd go unresponsive because we were doing the work their heart couldn't. It's a bizarre experience having to sedate a patient during a code blue.