J Korean Soc Emerg Med.  2000 Mar;11(1):105-110.

Consideration of Rescue Breathing methods during Infant Basic Life Support

• Kim BJ
• Jin YH
• Lee JB

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The current recommendation of rescue breathing techniques in the infant is to blow both the nose and mouth of infants by caregiver's mouth but recent studies suggest some caregivers may have trouble sealing a infant's mouth and nose. The purpose of this study is to estimate the ability of mothers to create a seal to their infants for the provision of rescue breathing according to current recommendation.
METHODS
Infants up to 1 year of age(n=98) and their mothers were enrolled from emergency department of Chonbuk National University Hospital. We measured the facial lengths of the infants and the width of mouth in their mothers and compared mouth widths of mothers with their infant's nose-to-mouth lengths.
RESULTS
In infants between 0 to 6 months, Mother transverse lengths were significantly larger than mouth, nose and nose-to-mouth lengths of the infants. In infants between 7 to 12 months, Mother transverse lengths were significantly larger than mouth and nose lengths of the infants but there was no statistically significant difference between mother transverse lengths and nose-to-mouth lengths of infants.
CONCLUSION
The finding indicate that the present recommendation to cover mouth and nose is partly not possible. We recommend that the mouth-to-nose ventilation of rescue breathing techniques for the infants who have respiratory arrest be taught to mothers.

MeSH Terms

Caregivers
Emergency Service, Hospital
Humans
Infant*
Jeollabuk-do
Mothers
Mouth
Nose
Respiration*
Ventilation