Airway Obstruction Vacs: What?

Many people have heard of airway obstruction it's essentially term used to denote if someone cannot breathe through their mouth or nose or both and receive air into their lungs as efficiently because of something physically in those spaces. There are several stages of distress the first and most obvious one is coughing. The person is awake and alert and knows that somethings wrong and attempts to force it out by coughing. The next stage typically is that the person will realize they cannot expel whatever it is that stock and will look for assistance. Usually this is in the form of finding a chair if they're all alone and bending over in front of it to try and push air out of the diaphragm or put their hands around your throat to make the universal sign of choking. This usually result in the #Heimlichmaneuver. Finally a person can go on conscious this is by far the most serious because now the person cannot fight whatever is in their airway and this is when things like #CPR come into place. And additional tool that has come out in the last several years is a #chokingvacuum or what they call an #airwayobstructionvacuum. 

This device originally designed for children who are choking which can be very common when they're learning to actually chew food is designed to place a face mask over the child creates suction through an accordion style blower and pole through suction the object out of their airway. Over the years they have made adult versions and now you can buy them in kits they have both adult and child versions. Notice that I did not describe reaching in to try and pull out the objects that might get in the way of someone's breathing there is several reasons for this but the most important thing is that significant amount of research has been done in this area and unless a person can physically see where the object is and know that they can reach it with enough space they typically end up pushing the object lower down into the body making it significantly harder to reach and remove. So the modern general device has always been unless you can see the object and can physically reach it with some space to actually maneuver it out don't try and reach into the mouth or into the nose because you'll end up pushing it down into the body further. 

So are these devices actually useful? I would say for a small child or baby absolutely. For an older child I would say that the Heimlich is considered much more of the gold standard. But in a situation where a person is passed out there's nothing wrong with the attempt there's been no indications or studies that indicate that using one of these devices causes physical harm the worst case scenario is that it doesn't work to help get rid of the obstruction. If it was a young child I would have one of these in my diaper bag I think and if there was more than a few people in the house especially if they were being dropped off with a relative grandparent I would show them how to use it. But I would also make sure that they understand how to do back blows and other choking restriction techniques as well it's just another good tool in the toolbox.