As we’ve been reporting for years, Dr. Henry Heimlich’s claim that abdominal thrusts can rescue drowning victims is a crock. Every expert says doing the Heimlich maneuver on drowning victims is not only useless, it can be deadly. Nevertheless, on Memorial Day weekend, the Enquirer promoted Heimlich’s dangerous advice by publishing a near full-page graphic on how to do the maneuver on drowning victims. This generated urgent letters to the editor from medical experts and Commissioner Todd Portune explaining that Heimlich’s drowning claims had been throroughly discredited for years and that someone following the Enquirer’s instructions might kill somebody. Despite these concerns, the Enquirer then reprinted Heimlich’s dangerous advice in a rearranged graphic. As for the letters, editor Dave Wells didn’t print a single one. We reported the story and printed the letters and former Enquirer reporter Ben Kaufman wrote it up in a thorough CityBeat column.

Now the Dayton Daily News has run an extensively researched five-part feature by medical reporter Kevin Lamb entitled, Is The Heimlich Maneuver Safe for Drowning Victims? The articles include interviews with authorities in emergency medicine, drowning, lifesaving, health fraud, Dr. Heimlich, and Heimlich’s son, Peter. Despite being confronted by overwhelming evidence that disproves his theories and questions his undocumented offers of proof, Dr. Heimlich continues to assert that he’s right and everyone else is wrong in a field in which he has no demonstrated expertise. Here are the five articles:

• Heimlich Claims His ‘Maneuver’ Can Save People from Drowning:

  Dr. Henry Heimlich is under increasing fire for his decades-long campaign to make the Heimlich maneuver the first step in drowning rescue. The American Heart Association takes the rare step of singling it out as “unnecessary and potentially dangerous” in new guidelines for this year. Despite Heimlich’s nearly 30-year campaign, every other authority to evaluate the Heimlich maneuver for drowning has recommended against using it before mouth-to-mouth breathing, if at all.

• Drowning Experts Question Use of Heimlich Maneuver:

  Other drowning researchers have repeatedly asked Dr. Henry Heimlich for medical reports and witness names from the examples he gives of successful drowning rescues using the Heimlich maneuver. In one exchange of letters, Heimlich asked how anyone could be expected to remember names from so long ago. “They’re pretty shaky,” said Dr. Robert Baratz, president of the National Council Against Health Fraud....Dr. James Orlowski has collected about 30 cases of Heimlich maneuvers leading to bad results in drowning rescues, usually because of vomiting. Orlowski, a prolific researcher, directs pediatric intensive care, pediatrics and medical ethics at University Community Hospital in Tampa and teaches at the University of South Florida.

• Heimlich Says He Has Proof ‘maneuver’ Works:

  The biggest use of the Heimlich maneuver for drowning rescues was when Jeff Ellis & Associates’ lifeguards throughout the country tried it before CPR in 1995-99...The research notes themselves are “just a bunch of scribbles on a grid sheet,” said B. Chris Brewster, lifesaving commissioner of the International Life Saving Federation..."Any respectable scientist - when somebody says, ‘Can I please look at your data and reanalyze it?’ - would say, ‘Sure, here are my notebooks and data books,’” (Dr.) Baratz said. Why, then, hasn’t Heimlich done that?”

• Heimlich Maneuver Could Prevent Drownings, But Not Being Used:

  People are dying because rescuers don’t use the Heimlich maneuver on drowning victims, Dr. Henry Heimlich says repeatedly. He can’t understand why the world’s authorities on drowning rescue can’t see what is so obvious to him...Heimlich’s assertions are “not the opinion of a maverick,” (Dr. ) Baratz said. “He talks as if, ‘You’ve got to believe me because I’m different and I was right before.’ His advocacy of the maneuver for drowning is, in fact, quackery.”

• Heimlich’s Son Questions Use of Maneuver on Drowning Victims:

  “As his son, I felt responsible to do what I could to put a stop to it. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

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1. Lolita says:
   04 Sep 2006  at  06:31 am | #

   Cincinnati written and video media has no balls when it comes to reporting the truth. It took Kaufman getting his back to attempt something at CityBeat. When do we get the rest of the story? When the red envelopes stop being passed at the Enquirer?

2. anon says:
   04 Sep 2006  at  06:35 am | #

   From the most recent US Coast Guard drowning guidelines written by Rear Admiral Alan Steinman MD (ret) :

   In clearing the airway prior to CPR, do not perform the Heimlich maneuver! The Heimlich maneuver has no role in drowning resuscitation, unless a solid foreign body obstructs the airway (this does not mean water or vomit) and ventilation is otherwise impossible.

   From the most recent American Heart Association drowning guidelines:

   There is no need to clear the airway of aspirated water, because only a modest amount of water is aspirated by the majority of drowning victims and it is rapidly absorbed into the central circulation, so it does not act as an obstruction in the trachea. Some victims aspirate nothing because they develop laryngospasm or breath-holding. Attempts to remove water from the breathing passages by any means other than suction (eg, abdominal thrusts or the Heimlich maneuver) are unnecessary and potentially dangerous. The routine use of abdominal thrusts or the Heimlich maneuver for drowning victims is not recommended.

   From the National Safety Council’s most recent guidelines:

   Drowning
   - Remove victim rapidly and safely from water but do not place yourself in danger
   - Start CPR with 2 ventilations. Do 5 cycles (about 2 minutes) before calling EMS
   - Do not try to remove water as if it were a foreign body

3. anon says:
   04 Sep 2006  at  06:43 am | #

   Heimlich the Hero? Cleveland Scene, 12-29-04

   It’s been a tough new century for Dr. Henry Heimlich, who’s gone from Ohio’s most famous doctor to its most disgraced.

   His hometown paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, busted him last year for stealing credit for a surgical procedure invented by a Hungarian doctor. Both The L.A. Times and New York Times have derided him for advocating the use of his Heimlich maneuver in drowning rescues, as well as for his efforts to cure AIDS and cancer by giving patients malaria. And in August, Scene wrote about scientists who suspected Heimlich of faking cases to burnish his reputation ("Heimlich’s Maneuver,” August 11).

   All the same, it’s hard to find good heroes in Cincinnati. So the Cincinnati Business Courier recently announced that it would bestow its greatest honor, the Lifetime Health Care Hero Award, on the 84-year-old Heimlich.

   “As journalists at the Business Courier, we realize there are detractors to what Dr. Heimlich has done in the past,” says Doug Bolton, the paper’s publisher. “His work has been controversial, and we’ve written about that and we will continue to write about it.”

   In the meantime, they’ll just give him lifetime achievement awards.

   But the paper was quick to place the blame, er, credit for Heimlich’s honor on a jury of community leaders.

   “We as journalists don’t make those determinations,” Bolton says. “We put the program together. The jury pulls those nominations . . . and looks at the contributions of each nominee before deciding on the lifetime hero.”

   And just who nominated the dubious doctor? His lawyer, Joe Dehner.

4. Freedom Fighter says:
   04 Sep 2006  at  07:34 am | #

   Well, it doesn’t look like sonny hindlick is going to credibly maneuver a rescue for his drowning political career, either !
   

5. lolita II says:
   04 Sep 2006  at  02:16 pm | #

   So who is going to sink the Marva and Mary show in Westwood and tell them the real truth about their new found hero? Someone has to burst their little bubble heads!

6. Humbert Humbert says:
   04 Sep 2006  at  06:21 pm | #

   lolita II: So who is going to sink the Marva and Mary show in Westwood and tell them the real truth about their new found hero?
   

   What will they say if it turns out their hero has been getting under the table “Character” commissions from Bill Gothard? Not even Uncle Carl will be able to clean up that mess.