One of the leading causes of death in the United States is heart failure. Whether it is a heart attack, stroke or any other heart disease, it could definitely be deadly. In fact, more than 600,000 people die every single year because of this and about 735,000 people suffer from a heart attack at least once.
Which is why it is very important for people to know what exactly they could do when they see someone suffering a cardiac arrest. A new study found that a certain classic song could actually help people when they are performing CPR. The 1990s song Macarena is actually an original dance pop music hit by the Spanish duo Los Del Rio, it was indeed a record-breaking song and up to this date, it is still being danced and played.
Macarena Beat On CPR
Who would’ve thought that the classic beat of the song Macarena could actually help save lives. This is all according to the newest research from the European Society of Anesthesiology which is for the Euroanasthesia Congress 2018 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The research says that the quality of how a person compresses during CPR or the cardiopulmonary resuscitation can actually achieve a much higher quality if a person doing it sing the song Macarena in their heads as a form as what they call a memory aid. This study which was done and presented by University of Barcelona’s Professory Enrique Carrero Cardenal together with his colleagues at the Hospital Clinic Barcelona and Universitat Autonoma which is also in Barcelona, Spain.
The said research said that the better the quality of the CPR is performed, the higher the chances of the person surviving. What they experts actually did is to basically compare the use of smartphone metronome application and compare it to the musical mental metronome with the use of the classic song Macarena. Their findings led them to the conclusion that both mentally singing the song as well as using a smartphone app could be very effective when doing incredibly effective and high-quality chest compressions.
The research team actually had to select a 164 medical students from the University of Barcelona, that would help them with their study. The researchers made these students perform a chest compression on a manikin constantly that would last for two minutes.
The students were divided into three groups, first is the students who performed the chest compressions without any help or control, the second group has a smartphone app that guides them, and the third group was asked to perform the chest compressions following the beat of the Macarena song in their head.
The smartphone app that was used by the second group makes a noise for every compression that the person does at 103 bears per minute. However, in the second group, they first needed to prove that they know exactly how the song goes since they have to have the correct beat of the song to match the compression correctly.
Research concludes smartphone app helps improve the quality of CPR
Smartphone App VS Macarena Song
Based on this, the researchers have found that the average compression within the target of 100-120 bpm, tuned out to be much higher with those who used the app and those who used the beat of the song. This is of course compared to the group that used nothing.
The group that did a CPR without the help of neither the smartphone or the beat of the song playing in their head, did achieve however the required compression depth. But then again, they didn’t exactly manage to have a higher quality of compression score compared to the smartphone app and the Macarena beat. The medical students who were asked to the experiment said that they think that app works better than any other method that was used during the study.
According to the American Heart Association, it is very important for people to have the knowledge on how to do basic CPR for emergency situations. No one needs to have a medical degree in order to perform one, they just need basic training. The best possible way to do a CPR especially when someone had a heart attack is chest compressions. With the help of the advanced technology, people can easily do chest compressions with the help of a smartphone app.