Strange CPR: DV8

June 24th, 2009

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

scene from DV8 #3

After last week’s brief discussion of CPR1, I felt it would be a good time to look at CPR as practiced in a variety of comic books. First up, DV8 #3 (1996), by Warren Ellis2 and Michael Lopez.

Evo and Frostbite stumble across the body of a young woman who has suffered a drug overdose. They proceed to CPR.

cprEvo is shown using a sit-on-top-of-the-patient style, as opposed to the correct off-to-the-side style. I don’t know why he’s chosen this stance, but it’s going to make it more difficult to move the patient and I suspect it will restrict some of the blood flow to the legs. It would also be a bad idea during a code blue because those femoral veins and arteries he’s blocking are good places get vascular access (plus it’s mighty hard to balance like that on a hospital gurney).

cprI have absolutely no idea what Frostbite is doing with the patient’s arms, unless he’s trying to use an older and for-good-reason forgotten resuscitation techniques. Whatever he’s doing seems to make her sleeves appear and disappear though.

cprEven though rescue breathing is no longer recommended for standard CPR, it was when this book was published, so it’s unusual that Evo and Frostbite are ignoring it — especially since they remarked earlier that she is suffering from respiratory arrest.

Successful resuscitation? Yes (though they then leave the scene, leaving the patient alone to suffer the other potentially fatal effects of her drug overdose. After all, the drug is still in her system.)

cpr
NOTES:
1. What I’ve read suggests CPR as we know it was developed in the late ’50s and early ’60s, but not taught to the public until the early ’70s. I’d like to think the Avengers would be ahead of the curve and trained in CPR by Iron Man #18. In 2008, it was switched to a chest compression only style.

2. Yes, Ellis is British, and they may have CPR taught slightly differently there, but DV8 takes place in the US, so I’m going to hold him accountable for the standard American Heart Association CPR.

11 Responses to “ Strange CPR: DV8 ”

  1. BlindSquirrel
    June 24th, 2009 at 1:37 am

    I know it’s been a while since I took CPR, but the breathing isn’t recommended anymore?? Why is that?

  2. Richard
    June 24th, 2009 at 6:02 am

    I don’t think it was ever suggested in the story that any of the characters were licensed EMT’s or anything.

    And I thought I had too much free time.

  3. Scott
    June 24th, 2009 at 6:38 am
    Official Comment

    You don’t have to be an EMT to know CPR; it’s a good thing for everyone to know.

    Regardless, in the panel before the ones I’ve shown, Evo and Frostbite refer to their “Field Training” when deciding to perform CPR — so they did receive training, though apparently it wasn’t particularly good training (or they weren’t paying attention).

  4. Michael Eckett
    June 24th, 2009 at 6:45 am

    It’s taught the same way in the UK. So you should definitely hold him accountable

  5. Sean Duggan
    June 24th, 2009 at 9:27 am

    I too am curious about the removal of rescue breathing. Wikipedia, my usual source for such up to date changes, says nothing about it (I half suspect an edit war where one of the editors refuses to believe that disco rescue breathing is dead and therefore keeps correcting the entry.

  6. Scott
    June 24th, 2009 at 9:48 am
    Official Comment

    From my understanding, the chest compression only method of CPR was recommended because:
    1) It had results as good as — if not better than — traditional chest-compression/rescue breathing CPR.
    2) It is easier for the lay-public (i.e. non-medical) to understand and perform.

    There is still seems to be a fair amount of confusion, if not controversy, about the change. It is covered briefly in the Wikipedia CPR article (linked above) under the “Alternate Method” section, and this Mayo Clinic article discusses both methods.

  7. Beaton
    June 24th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    I’m going to go out on a limb and say that was all Lopez. Ellis writes a fairly terse script and leaves his artists lots of room for visual interpretation. If you could find the script for that page, I can almost guarantee it would read “Panel 1 — Evo begins performing CPR on the unconscious girl.”

  8. David Oakes
    June 24th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    If you hadn’t told me this was supposed to be CPR, I would have to assume that those two men were performing a criminal act. (I can almost get past the mounting as a momentary lapse. But holding her arms…)

  9. Nick
    June 25th, 2009 at 8:03 am

    I once had to do CPR that way on an EMT call. The older guy had a cardiac arrest and fell off the couch he was sleeping on and got wedged between the couch and coffee table. There was only a foot between the coffee table and TV stand (really small room), so there were max 6″ on either side of him. He had died a while ago so there was a trouser-full of urine and fecal matter, which I had to hover above to perform CPR. Bad CHF too, so every time I compressed some ripe lung juice came out. While the entire Large Italian Family stood in the doorway and sobbed.

    Yeah, that was fun.

  10. RichterCa
    June 25th, 2009 at 10:48 am

    Scott: What I have read RE: CPR suggests that it is far more important during CPR to keep blood flow to the brain. The Oxygen already in the blood and lungs is good for several minutes, if you keep the blood pumping. And even a slightly reduced amount of Oxygen in the blood will still keep someone alive.

    And I did hear that only doing chest compressions did have a better success rate in keeping people alive.

  11. Marge
    July 1st, 2009 at 7:42 am

    Yeah, we do chest compressions the same in the UK. Because, you know, same sense of balance and similar gurneys :)

    I was re-taught CPR recently, and current UK rubric is: 30x compressions, 2x rescue breaths. Unless in drowning, where you start with the rescue breaths. So even though rescue breaths are still used, they’re a small part of the rescuss.

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