Within how much time will it take to die if you stop breathing?

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lisab
Rating
6 minutes and the brain starts to go along with all the other organs.


emtd65
Once you stop breathing you eventually go into cardiac arrest. The first 3 minutes a crucial.


mlgable
If you stop breathing and it lasts more than say 2 minutes you are dead if the heart stops beating too. Basically when you heart stops beating and you stop breathing you are considered dead.


Vince M
Someone tell "mlgable" that I can hold my breath more than two minutes and I'm not, yet dead.

The brain can die from lack of oxygen in as little as six minutes. But, if the blood is saturated with oxygen, and the heart is still pumping, it may take several more minutes before the brain runs out of oxygen.

Someone may also want to remind her that CPR (which is NEVER begun unless the victim is not breathing and the heart has stopped beating) manages to rescescitate hundreds of people every year. Only in old movies did somone reach down to take a pulse and say, "She's dead."


Beaver
Rating
it probably depends on many factors including body position... but I will go along with lisab in that I witnessed a heart attack victim who stopped breathing at a bus stop... it was approximately 6 min.


"McRib" NREMT-P
Rating
Well the time it would take is dependent on a couple variables. First off would be how saturated with oxygen a persons blood is. In fact if a person is pre-oxygenated before being apneic (not breathing), they will not desaturate for as long as 5 or 6 minutes. I can atest to this being true. When in Paramedic school when I was on my OR rotation, (where we would just intubate patients), I would always freak out when it was taking me a long time to get the tube in place in the trachea. Yet I noticed that no one else in the room was ever concerned at how long it was taking me. I later learned that if the patient is presaturated with 100% oxygen, that you got plenty of time.
The second factor to consider is how efficent the person's circulatory system is at using the oxygen it has. For example, a expert free diver can hold their breath for many minutes, while a couch potato smoker would be lucky to make it 30 seconds, holding their breath.
Hope this answers your question!

By the way Vince CPR in some cases in continued even it a person has a pulse. New CPR recommendations state that CPR should be continued another 2 minutes after return of a pulse following cardiac arrest. This is done to increase coronary perfusion.