Medicine: Death at Dinner

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Eller and Haugen estimate that 90% of dinner-table fatalities could be prevented, if doctors and laymen alike would not immediately assume that the victim is suffering from coronary thrombosis. The combination of eating and the inability to talk or breathe is a sure tipoff, they say; a genuine heart attack victim can usually speak. Backslapping is a waste of time, unless the victim is upside down, and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is like "trying to pour water into a corked bottle." The food must be retrieved—with fingers or, if necessary, with a pair of tweezers. After a year of testing in Florida, Eller and Haugen now recommend that a 9-in. plastic tweezer-like device called Choke Saver be kept at the ready in every restaurant. It has already been used by a city first-aid unit in Jacksonville, Fla., to save the lives of three victims. Using either his fingers or the Choke Saver, a clumsy amateur may bruise a victim's throat while wrestling with the obstructing clump of food. But, the Florida doctors note, "a sore throat is to be preferred to a dead patient."

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