Stuck meat in windpipe.

I successfully performed the Heimlich manoeuvre on my friend at a barbecue years ago, and she subsequently told me I saved her life. She was choking, her knees were buckling and no one else noticed, but I did. I had read about the HM just recently and I did it without hesitation, had to get my arms around her under her thick jacket (Hi Marty ).

The danger is that often people are embarrassed in social settings when they choke, and they wander off for privacy and then lose consciousness...

So I still call it that!

I saw the "abdominal thrust" carried out at a works Christmas party about 27 years ago. Our receptionist started choking and no amount of slapping on the back helped. It was very frightening and most of us just flapped around panicking. My work colleague, who was funny and nice but who I had formerly thought would be the last person to turn to in a crisis, calmly carried out this manoeuvre and dislodged the food, to everyone's - not least the receptionist's - great relief.

I'm surprised that it's now considered to be ineffective - what is the alternative then (apart from Diet Coke that is)?

I've heard Coca Cola is pretty good for cleaning engines though!

It was actually a lady, not a man who wrote the letter.

It was because she had put her name to it, which I admit doesn't mean much, I thought I would post it.

Her name was Dorothy Roe. I agree it does sound far fetched.

Had her name been C.O.D Roe or F. Roe I might have found it, hu hum, a bit fishy.

I will happily bow to your better judgement ladies.

Ah! I am out of date. Trying it would be better than nothing, though.

Elegran we don't call it the Heimlich wotsit anymore - Mr H was after royalties and he fell out with a colleague who also claimed to have invented the maneouvre!

It's now known as an Abdominal Thrust.

Plus, its efficacy has been questioned.

Yes, if it was in his windpipe he would be unable to breathe for long enough to make it to the hospital.

It needs the Heimlich maneouvre.

I don't see how coca cola would expand the windpipe? GALEN!

Perhaps the resultant belches would shift it.

From now on I am always ordering diet coke with my lunch !

POGS I read an article recently, not a letter, about this meat in the windpipe story. It didn't ring true.

The patient concerned, it was in the USA, is said to have had an unnaturally narrow oesophagus (food pipe) and it sounded to me that it was that which had the meat stuck in it - if it had been in the trachea (windpipe) he wouldn't have had time to amble along to A&E.

It was in A&E that a doctor, attempting to deal with the lodged meat in the oesophagus, damaged the trachea.

It was a badly-written article.

If you had meat stuck in the trachea you would be in serious trouble anyway - I wouldn't try adding Coke to the mix!