My experience over the years, Adrian has placed asthmatic pre-hospital
'sudden' deaths into two groups, those who we can ventilate and those who we
can't and I seem to have had about 50:50 although the numbers are small -
about 3 in each group.
Those that will ventilate have given few problems - intubation and
remarkably easy chest movement. They pink up very quickly and the most
difficult part is holding them on the stretcher to hospital - hypoxia one
assumes - not the tube in their throat!
The others presented with a hyper-inflated chest with no air movement on
squeezing the bag.
I thank Francis for his thoughts on air trapping and also look forward to
the references. Are there any on that physical squeeze you mentioned?
Regards
Dave Fletcher
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