Some patients with cardiac arrest are simply not going to be resuscitated, no matter how hard rescuers try.
Cellular damage gets worse over time as the cells are not fed nutrients or oxygen, and as they build up toxins and carbon dioxide that needs to be removed.
The longer someone stays in cardiac arrest, the less likely they are to be revived with CPR or advanced treatments.
To figure out who is too dead to be saved, emergency responders look for five signs of irreversible death:
- Decapitation
- Decomposition
- Postmortem lividity
- Postmortem rigidity
- Burned beyond recognition