The Wall Street Journal-20080212-Health Mailbox
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Health Mailbox
Full Text (591 words)[Columnist Melinda Beck answers readers' questions]
Q: What should you do if you come across an unconscious person, as in the case of actor Heath Ledger?
-- J.K.
A: Emergency physicians say the first step is to verify that the person really is unconscious. Shout, shake him or dig your knuckles over his collarbone. That may revive him.
If it doesn't, call 911. Then check to see if the person is breathing. It may be shallow so put your ear to his face to feel for any movement of air. Also watch to see if his chest is rising. If you don't detect breathing, tilt his chin back, open his mouth and clear out anything that may be blocking his airway. Then check again for breath. Also check for a pulse; the easiest place is under the jawline on either side of the windpipe.
If the unconscious person is breathing and has a pulse, you probably don't need to do anything else. Just stay by his side until assistance comes.
If there's no breath or pulse, the 911 dispatchers may ask you to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. In a nutshell, American Heart Association guidelines instruct lay rescuers to: Close the person's nose with your fingers, and blow two quick breaths into his mouth to make his chest rise. Then push hard and fast on his chest, 30 times. Two breaths and 30 compressions make one cycle.
This can quickly become exhausting as the cycle is repeated, and it may be several minutes before responders arrive. Shout for assistance if anyone is nearby.
"Bad CPR is better than no CPR" -- but only if the victim isn't breathing, says Eric Lavonas, an emergency doctor and toxicologist in Denver, and a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. Doing CPR unnecessarily could risk injury, he notes.
Situations like this are precisely why public-safety experts encourage everyone to get CPR training, which is available free in most communities. See the American Heart Association's Web site (www.americanheart.org) for more information.
Q: I was recently given a pair of the Bose QC3 headphones with active noise canceling, and have felt queasy every time I put them on. I had to take them off and lie down at one point, and ended up throwing up later that night and was unable to eat more than apple sauce the next day. As crazy as it sounds, did the headphones cause my discomfort?
-- T.P.
A: It's possible. Bose's "Acoustic Noise Cancelling" headphones work by electronically determining the difference between wanted and unwanted sounds, and creating a correction signal that acts to negate the unwanted noise, according to its Web site. (The company didn't respond to requests to comment.) Sarah Stackpole, a New York ear, nose and throat doctor, speculates that the sound waves that cancel each other out may still transmit enough very low frequency vibrations to stimulate the balance receptors that are connected to the hearing hair cells in the inner ear. These vibrations are akin to those caused by blast explosions or barotrauma in scuba diving, but much less forceful, she says. The disequilibrium that some people may feel from this is made worse because the vibrations falsely signal that the head is moving, but the eyes report that the head is stationary. Those mixed signals make the headphone wearer feel dizzy.
Some people are more sensitive to this sensation than others. Many users love their headsets. If the vertigo doesn't improve, you may need to decrease the input by using earphones without a tight seal.
