Video: How to Open the Airway for CPR

Learn how to open someone's airway when performing CPR in this free first aid video.

Video Transcript

In this clip we are going to talk about the different ways of opening up the airway depending on the different situations you are in. In a medical type situation where as one you maybe find the patient slumped over, over a car seat, in a bed or on the couch, something where you don't expect trauma to be involved, it is safe to go ahead and open up the airway using the method that we talked about previous; head tilt chin lift. Doing so again with the palm and fingers to open up the airway. By doing this it does move the cervical spine which is the vertebrae in your neck, but that is okay because you don't expect any injury to be done to the neck. In a situation where you think that this is a trauma situation, maybe someone is knocked unconscious during in a collision, a motor vehicle accident, or maybe falling off of a ladder. In these situations there is a high risk of a trauma to the cervical spine and you don't want to minimize any movement because if they have any fractures in the cervical spine and you move it, you can possibly severe their spinal cord which it could paralyze them. So you want to keep that as straight as possible. So you still want to open the airway and so to do this, what you are going to do is actually use your thumbs and you are going to put your thumbs right on the patient's cheek bones, located right here. You are going to take your fingers and kind of like a claw, you are going to find underneath the chin, the angle of the jaw right here. What you are going to do is push down with your thumbs firmly and you are going to lift up in kind of that squeezing motion and actually move the jaw forward and up. By doing that you are still opening up the airway without moving the plane of the neck at all.

How to Open the Airway for CPR

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