THE MANOEUVRE WE ALL NEED TO LEARN
IF SOMEONE is choking, the first thing to do is to encourage them to cough and clear the obstruction, says Dr Lynn Thomas of St John Ambulance. If this doesn’t work, then try back slaps, where you strike the person on the back with five sharp blows.
If this fails as well, then try the Heimlich manoeuvre — now called an abdominal thrust. First, check there is nothing in the person’s mouth by looking (do not insert your fingers or you may push any food further in).
Then, standing behind them, clench your hands to make one fist, and put it between the person’s belly button and their breast bone. Grasp tightly and thrust sharply inwards and upwards, five times.
If this fails, call 999 — then go back and administer five back blows, alternated with five abdominal thrusts, until help arrives. You should be prepared to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or
CPR, to keep blood pumping around their body. Call 999 and put the call handler on speakerphone while waiting for help to arrive, advises Dr Thomas, ‘so they can direct you to properly do CPR’.
Do not perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on an infant. ‘Children under one have a tiny chest and you can cause significant damage doing an abdominal thrust,’ says Dr Thomas.
‘So, in infants, lay them across your thighs, face down — with their face over the edge of your leg — before starting back blows. Obviously, children are smaller so do it more gently.’
If that hasn’t cleared the obstruction, turn the child over, face up on your thigh, with one hand underneath their back tilting them, so their head is tilted to the floor. Use two fingers to perform an abdominal thrust in the same place as for an adult, pushing upwards into the chest.
For older children: 1. Stand or kneel behind your child; 2. Clench your fist and place it between the navel and ribs;
3. Grasp this hand with your other hand and pull sharply inwards and upwards;
4. Repeat up to five times; 5. Make sure you don’t apply pressure to the lower ribcage, as this may cause damage.