cpr

WTF Fun Fact 13461 – CPR Playlist

Hopefully you’ll never have to access the CPR playlist on Spotify, but it’s handy to know it’s there when you need it!

The life-saving rhythm of music

Picture this: you’re in an emergency where someone’s life hangs in the balance. The heart has stopped. The breathing’s ceased. Panic sets in. What do you do? For some, the answer may just lie in the beat of their favorite song.

In an innovative move, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital has turned to music as an unexpected life-saving tool. They’ve curated a Spotify playlist with songs that have the perfect tempo for CPR compressions. The goal? To empower everyone, not just medical professionals, to perform effective CPR.

If you’ve taken a CPR course, you know that timing is everything. The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends a rate of 100 to 120 chest compressions per minute during CPR. Keeping this rhythm, though, can be challenging in the heat of the moment. Enter the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s “Songs to do CPR to” playlist on Spotify.

A playlist with a purpose

This playlist isn’t about entertainment. It’s a practical, life-saving tool. It features 47 popular songs, each one maintaining a tempo of 100 to 120 beats per minute (BPM). This rhythm perfectly mirrors the ideal rate of chest compressions during CPR.

The list brings together classics like “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees and modern hits such as “Sorry” by Justin Bieber. The idea? By associating the rhythm of these familiar tunes with the pace of chest compressions, anyone can deliver effective CPR.

Hands-only CPR is simple. It involves hard and fast chest compressions in the center of the patient’s chest. This helps maintain blood flow, providing much-needed oxygen to the brain and other organs during cardiac arrest. Matching these compressions to the beat of a familiar song can help maintain the rhythm. But remember, always dial 911 first!

Changing the game with a CPR playlist

The NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s playlist isn’t just a clever idea. It’s a life-saver, literally. By combining music with medical knowledge, they’ve given us a unique and memorable tool to use during cardiac emergencies. The best part? It’s not just for the trained professionals. Anyone can use this playlist to guide their CPR compressions, potentially saving a life in the process.

The use of a Spotify playlist for CPR training is a game-changer. By making CPR more accessible and memorable, it shows us how innovation can transform the way we learn life-saving skills. And who knows? The next time a favorite tune plays, you might be tapping your feet to the beat of a life-saving rhythm.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “‘Songs to do CPR to’ playlist could be a lifesaving soundtrack” — Washington Post

WTF Fun Fact 13193 – The Office CPR Scene Saved a Life

Cross Scott was a 21-year-old fan of The Office living in Arizona when he saved a man’s life using CPR. But Scott was never trained in the maneuver. Instead, he learned it from watching “The Office” CPR scene.

What is The Office CPR scene?

In the episode of the NBC comedy starring Steven Carrell, main character Michael Scott instructs employees to do chest compressions to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees.

According to Rolling Stone’s coverage (cited below), Cross Scott actually sang the song while he was performing the life-saving chest compressions. Ironically, in the CPR television scene, Scott also gives a lot of questionable advice.

Saving a life

Cross Scott drew on his television CPR skills when he found a woman unconscious behind the wheel of a car rolling down a dirt pull-off road in 2019. He is an auto care technician and managed to break the window of the woman’s car with a rock to free her. Then he noticed she didn’t have a pulse.

Most of us wouldn’t know what to do in that situation, but professionals have advised people not to be afraid to do chest compressions on someone who has no pulse. Otherwise, the person will likely die if no help is around.

It took paramedics 10 minutes to arrive at the scene, but Scott had already performed chest compressions successfully enough for her to start breathing again (and throw up). The woman survived and was released from the hospital the same day.

Scott recalled “I’ve never prepared myself for CPR in my life. I had no idea what I was doing.” But it turns out he knew more than he realized thanks to The Office. “Stayin’ Alive” is the correct rhythm for chest compressions. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Arizona Man Who Learned CPR From ‘The Office’ Saves Woman’s Life” — Rolling Stone

WTF Fun Fact 12627 – The Face of Resusci Annie

If you ever learned CPR, there’s at least a fair chance that you learned it using a life-sized mannequin called Rescue Annie (aka Resusci Anne, L’Inconnue de la Seine (Unknown Woman of Seine), the Mona Lisa of Seine, and The Most Kissed Girl in the World). We use these large dolls so that we don’t have to practice on each other, which is a good thing since CPR can result in broken ribs.

While we never really thought about how she got her face, 2 dental students in the UK decided to do some research a few years back and find out just how Rescue Annie got made. And the answers are creepier than we could have imagined.

The face of Annie is the death mask of a woman who drowned and was never identified.

In the late 19th century, the body of a girl was pulled out of the River Seine in Paris. An examination of her face led to guesses that she was roughly 16 years old, but no one could identify her.

The body was put on public display in the hopes that someone could identify here, which was common practice at the time (and a popular attraction). People were more than a little curious about the placid-looking teen, who came to be known as “L’Inconnue de la Seine (the Unknown Woman of the Seine).” 

The pathologist who performed the girl’s autopsy had a model maker create a death mask for her. It was a plaster cast tmade by Lorenzi model makers, the same people who eventually decided the mask was too good not to be shared, so they replicated it in bulk and sold copies. You can still purchase “Noyée [Drowned Woman] de la Seine” from them.

So how did a death mask come to be the face of a CPR doll? Well, in the 1950s when Archer Gordon decided to make a CPR dummy for medical students to practice on, he called on toymaker Åsmund Laerdal, who had seen a copy of the mask and decided to use it for the face.

The website calls her Resusci Anne, a name that just somehow stuck. The company estimates that roughly 300 million people have laid their lips on a version of the doll to learn mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Another fun fact? Michael Jackson’s line “Annie are you okay?” in the song “Smooth Criminal“ is an homage to the doll. In CPR training, trainees are told to check for a response in the patient by asking “Annie are you okay.”  – WTF fun facts

Source: “How a girl’s ‘death mask’ from the 1800s became the face of CPR dolls” — Live Science