CPR Barriers With Mouthpieces

Cadiopulmonary resuscitation has seen many changes over the past several decades. CPR has saved lives and will continue to do so, but because disease continues to concern many laypersons, they have not attempted CPR because of the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation component. But with products now on the market designed for just that situation, mouth to mouth resuscitation, there should no longer be a worry in 2010 about performing this skill.

Back in the Day

• Emergency medical technicians didn't always have to right to worry about AIDS, HIV, hepatitis or disease in general. Even before the days of CPR masks, there were always worries about having to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. "What if they...?" "Or, what if...?" Instructors would tell their students to do it or their victims would die. Many an old EMT has tasted--well, you know.

Reality

• The mask on an Ambu bag is very similar to a CPR mask.

  By the 1990s, numerous CPR masks or barrier devices were on sale to protect EMTs from disease and unwanted ingestion of foreign fluids. Some companies were handing them out to employees in little key chain packages. CPR also began to be done using a barrier of some kind. EMTs didn't perform mouth to mouth any more; it was mouth to mask.

  A search on the Internet for CPR masks or barriers will provide you with a multitude of choices in packaging, colors, key chain pouches, on the belt pouches, and pouches for the glove box or purse. Anyone wanting such a device has a variety in style and price to choose from.

Barriers

• All CPR barriers have a one-way valve in the mouthpiece. Whether it is the plastic face sheet or pocket mask, all such devices are equipped so nothing travels back to the rescuer. The OSHA Bloodborne Pathogen Standard, 1910.1030, speaks to this issue: "Personal protective equipment will be considered 'appropriate' only if it does not permit blood or other potentially infectious materials to pass through to or reach the employee's work clothes, street clothes, undergarments, skin, eyes, mouth or other mucous membranes under normal conditions of use and for the duration of time which the protective equipment will be used."

  Because of the workplace standard, the general public benefits from the engineering controls that manufacturers must incorporate into their masks or barriers.

Types

• All barriers/masks have a mouthpiece, but it is the manufacturer that determines what the mouthpiece will be. On the top end of the scale is the "pocket mask." It has a mouthpiece that is quite easy to use. It is removable and can be cleaned for future use. On the opposite end are the disposable barriers or shields. Some have a tube-like mouthpiece about 2 inches high, and others have a disk pressed into the plastic that is almost flush with the barrier material.