Top Things to Know: 2024 American Heart Association and American Red Cross Guidelines for First Aid
Published: November 14, 2024
- General care and safety: The first aid provider should provide care within their skill and knowledge set, seeking further medical care as needed, and be mindful of their own safety.
- First aid for bleeding: When faced with life-threatening bleeding, the first aid provider should apply direct pressure followed by application of a tourniquet or wound packing, if the location of the wound is amenable.
- First aid for chest pain: In adults with acute chest pain, it is recommended that emergency medical services (EMS) be activated to initiate transport to the closest emergency department (ED). While awaiting the arrival of EMS, first aid providers may encourage alert adults experiencing nontraumatic chest pain to chew and swallow aspirin (162–325 mg), unless the person experiencing pain has a known aspirin allergy or has been advised by a health care professional not to take aspirin.
- First aid for stroke: The use of a stroke recognition scale such as Face, Arms, Speech, Time (FAST) is recommended to aid in the recognition of acute stroke in adults and may also be used as an adjunct in pediatrics, although it is not validated in that setting and should not solely be used to identify the broad presentation of stroke in children.
- First aid for opioid overdose: A first aid provider who encounters a person with suspected opioid overdose who is unresponsive and not breathing normally should activate the emergency response system, provide high-quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR; compressions plus ventilation), and administer naloxone.
- Assistance with administration of prescribed medications: The first aid provider should help a person self-administer prescribed life-saving medications as needed, such as inhaled bronchodilators for asthma and intramuscular epinephrine for anaphylaxis.
- First aid for open chest wounds: In the first aid setting, it is reasonable to leave an open chest wound exposed to ambient air; to place a clean, nonocclusive, dry dressing such as gauze or a clean piece of cloth; or to place a specialized dressing such as a vented chest seal.
- First aid for tick bites: Remove an attached tick as soon as possible by grasping the head of the tick as close to the skin as possible with tweezers or a commercial tick removal device and pulling upward with steady, even pressure.
- First aid for seizure: First aid providers should activate EMS for first-time seizures; seizures lasting more than 5 minutes; multiple seizures without return to normal; seizures in water; seizures with injuries, breathing difficulty, or choking; seizures in infants less than 6 months of age; seizures in pregnant individuals, or if the person doesn’t return to baseline mental status within 5 to 10 minutes after seizure activity stops.
- Oxygen and pulse oximetry use in first aid: It is reasonable for first aid providers to use pulse oximetry results as part of a complete assessment of an ill or injured person and in consideration of the many limitations of pulse oximeters. First aid providers should be aware of the potential harms of administration of supplemental oxygen in persons with known chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and should not provide oxygen over an oxygen saturation of 92%.
Citation
Hewett Brumberg EK, Douma MJ, Alibertis K; Charlton NP, Goldman MP, Harper-Kirksey K, Hawkins SC, Hoover A, Leichtle S, Kule A, McClure SF, Wang GS, Whelchel M, White L, Lavonas EJ; on behalf of the American Heart Association and American Red Cross. 2024 American Heart Association and American Red Cross guidelines for firstaid. Circulation. Published online November 14, 2024. doi: 10.1161/CIR.0000000000001281