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UPDATE: Via Aquatics Industry Finally Discontinues Heimlich Maneuver by Nate Traylor, Aquatics International, February 3, 2016:

One of the nation’s largest lifeguard certification agencies has stopped teaching a controversial drowning rescue technique that critics alleged was ineffective and potentially dangerous.

The National Aquatic Safety Co. has long championed the Heimlich maneuver as an effective way to remove water from the lungs before initiating CPR on a drowning victim. Developed in the mid ’90s by NASCO founder John Hunsucker, the drowning-rescue version of the Heimlich called for the lifeguard to first administer abdominal thrusts on a drowning victim in the water before extrication for CPR.

The technique came under intense scrutiny in recent years as aquatic and medical professionals called the practice into question, claiming that it was ineffective and that it could further endanger those in need of rescue.

Despite the criticism and the headlines in the mainstream media, NASCO stuck to its guns, even after the Heimlich Institute stopped advocating that the maneuver be used to treat drowning victims in 2012.

...Another development may have forced the decision: In recent years, health departments in New Jersey, Utah and Nevada, threatened to strip NASCO of its certification to to do business in those states unless it stopped teaching the Heimlich as part of its drowning rescue protocol, according to local media reports.

“Presumably, NASCO finally dumped the protocol because it was affecting their bottom line,” said Peter Heimlich, son of inventor Dr. Henry Heimlich, and the most outspoken critic of using the maneuver to address drowning, in a statement to AI.

Hunsucker declined to comment for this article.

...As for (Peter) Heimlich and his wife, Karen, who’ve been on a crusade to dissuade the public from using his father’s technique, this is chapter they’re relieved to see closed. It’s believed NASCO was the last such agency to perform what many considered an ill-advised rescue maneuver.

“I doubt there is another company reckless enough to take it up,” he stated, “so this likely ends my father’s bizarre 40-year campaign to promote the treatment.”

My original item is below the hash marks.



Today via Local Lifeguard Training Company No Longer Teaching Heimlich Maneuver by staff reporter Craig Malisow, Houston Press:

For years, the Dickinson-based NASCO Aquatics, one of the nation's largest lifeguard certification companies taught a debunked rescue technique, even as other professional and medical organizations said it could further endanger drowning victims.

But NASCO has dropped the technique — a version of the Heimlich maneuver done while a drowning victim is still in the water — from its most recent training manual, which pleases one of NASCO's biggest critics, Peter Heimlich, whose father gave the abdominal-thrusting technique its name.

NASCO founder John Hunsucker swore by the technique, even as the American Red Cross, American Heart Association, the United States Lifeguard Coalition, and the International Life Saving Federation. Most medical and aquatic experts have stated that applying the Heimlich maneuver to a drowning victim delays CPR and could cause a victim to aspirate vomit into the lungs. 

Until just recently, Hunsucker's response to the experts has been short and sweet: "Screw 'em."

...Peter Heimlich shared an email of his own, telling us:

"I'm relieved that NASCO has finally pulled the plug on its reckless 'Heimlich for drowning' protocol. Experts have said that for decades NASCO was conducting what amounted to an unsupervised medical experiment using unsuspecting swimmers at their client water parks. Long after prominent medical experts and leading first aid organizations had thoroughly dismissed the treatment as useless and potentially lethal, NASCO persisted. Even after my father's Heimlich Institute stopped advocating the treatment, NASCO wouldn't stop.

On the bright side, NASCO was the last holdout, so this effectively marks the end of my father's bizarre 40-year campaign to promote the treatment."

Click here for "These so-called medical experts. Screw 'em," my compilation of media reports about NASCO's now-defunct "Heimlich protocol."

This medical madness began in August 1974 when my father and his crony, the late Victor H. Esch MD, began hyping the first of a series of fraudulent case reports in which they claimed near-dead drowning victims were miraculously revived by the Heimlich maneuver. (See here and here.)

The result of their folly? Dozens of poor outcome cases -- including children.

To these journalists, physicians, water safety professionals, and public employees whose efforts helped put an end to this dark chapter in first aid history -- Lifesaving Aye

Margarita Abramova, Paul Auerbach MD, Ihsan A. Azzam, PhD MD MPH, Robert S. Baratz MD PhD, Chris Brewster, Zach Brown, Ed Castillo, Peter Chambers DO, Rich Connelly, Bennett Cunningham, Margaret Downing, Gerry Dworkin, Roy Fielding, Brenda Flanagan, Shawn Foucher, Tom Francis, Mike Giglio, Natalie Gagliordi, Tracey D. Green MD, Curt Guyette, Jason Haap, Brad Herzog, Michelle Iracheta, Tom Jackman, Ben Kaufman, Kendra Kozen, Kevin Lamb, Jennifer Learn-Andes, Terri Lees, Craig Malisow, David Markenson MD, Ron Marsden, Allyn Nakashima MD, James Orlowski MD, Eric Peterson, Francesco Pia PhD, Lory Pounder, Linda Quan MD, Karlee Prazak, Mike Riley, Mike Risinit, Peter Rosen MD, Mark Saal, Mayrav Saar, Timothy Smith, Todd Spivak, Alan Steinman MD, Gary Thill, Steve Volk, Cindy Weightman, Peter Wernicki MD, Ian White, Aaron Wische

A special mention must go to writer Pamela Mills-Senn of Long Beach and editor Mike Moran whose landmark 2000 article, Water Rescue Sequence: The Controversial Role of the Heimlich Maneuver, was the Rosetta Stone for much of the research conducted by my wife Karen and me into my father's unusual career.

(If I've inadvertently left out anyone, please e-mail me.)

The May issue of Aquatics International, "the only publication devoted exclusively to the commercial and public swimming pool industries," just published Dangerous Maneuvers by Kendra Kozen, a senior editor at the magazine.

Kendra Kozen

Her article may be the stake in the heart of my father's 30-year campaign to promote the use of the Heimlich maneuver (aka abdominal thrusts) to resuscitate drowning victims.

The article is 50% a review of the Heimlich-for-drowning history and 50% about NASCO, a Houston-area lifeguard training company which, against all reason, has been teaching lifeguards to perform the Heimlich on drowning victims for decades. (Click here for a compendium of news reports about that.)

From the AI article:

Here’s what is known about the Heimlich as it relates to drowning prevention: It is not recommended by any medical authority as a rescue technique for drowning. Furthermore, evidence suggests that performing the Heimlich maneuver in an underwater submersion incident actually could be harmful.

Gerald Dworkin (source)

"The Heimlich is not an accepted medical practice as response for drowning victims. Unless the medical authorities - the American Heart Association, Red Cross - were to adopt it, I don’t see how anyone could advocate its use,” says Gerald Dworkin, a consultant with Lifesaving Resources Inc. in Kennebunkport, Maine.

...Heimlich began touting the technique as a means to revive drowning victims almost as soon as it was introduced. In a 1975 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, he wrote about Victor H. Esch, MD, of Potomac, Md., claiming that Dr. Esch watched a lifeguard rescue a nearly dead drowning victim at Rehoboth Beach, Del., and then - somewhat miraculously - Esch stepped in to help by applying abdominal thrusts. He claimed to have gotten the idea after reading a recent article about Heimlich’s new choking rescue method, which had been introduced only three months earlier.

According to Heimlich, Esch’s actions revived the victim. Over the next several years he published articles in several other journals, describing at least one other case study where the victim also reportedly was saved by the use of the Heimlich maneuver.

...According to some investigative reports, correspondence from that time indicates that Heimlich operated by threatening other experts, and accusing them of fraud...But information uncovered by Peter Heimlich indicates that actually it was the case studies his father used to support his position that were at issue, and it appears fraudulent, in many instances. 

“For 30 years, my father endlessly trumpeted the cases in the media and in medical journals as proof of his claims,” Peter says. “I fact-checked all the cases and discovered that they ranged from dubious to outright fraud. For example, a couple of doctors who were the alleged rescuers in two of the 'miracle cases' just happened to be longtime buddies of my father, a fact that none of them disclosed.”

One of those was Esch, according to Peter, who says he received verbal confirmation in 2005 that Esch knew Heimlich for many years before the time of the rescue described in JAMA. Esch died in 2010.

The 2005 "verbal confirmation" was during a phone call I had with Dr. Esch. He told me he'd known my father since the early 1950s, but said he didn't remember how they met.

Victor H. Esch MD (1922-2010)

I first learned about their longtime relationship in 2003 from reporter Robert Anglen who interviewed Esch for a pending article for the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Anglen's story was spiked, but the information was eventually reported in Tom Francis's November 2005 two-part article published by Radar magazine:

Heimlich cites his own list of cases supporting his maneuver's efficacy against drowning, but the people reporting these cases have prior associations with Heimlich himself. Former Washington, DC, fire surgeon Victor Esch, for example, claimed to have saved a man from drowning at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in August 1974 by using the Heimlich maneuver. Esch, who told me he has known Henry Heimlich for decades, can offer no hospital reports or witnesses. And he has told several different versions of the same story. During the course of one interview he told me that the incident happened at Rehoboth Beach, only to deny it five minutes later and insist that it happened at another beach.

Esch, whose primary residence was in Potomac, also owned a condo in Rehoboth Beach. According to Wiki:

The town often bills itself as "The Nation's Summer Capital" due to the fact that it is a frequent summer vacation destination for Washington, D.C., residents as well as visitors from Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Vacationers are drawn for many reasons, including the town's charm, artistic appeal, and nightlife.

Still famous for its beaches, wooden boardwalk, eclectic shops, amusements, and sporting activities, today's Rehoboth Beach is also known as one of the mid-Atlantic coast's popular gay and lesbian getaways because of the large number of gay-owned and operated businesses and because of the gay-frequented stretch of beach near Queen Street, known as Poodle Beach.

From reporter Tom Jackman's article last year in the Washington Post, here's one of the side effects of the phony case reports my father and his buddies cooked up and used to urge the public to perform the Heimlich on drowning victims:

In Tampa, which has one of the highest drowning rates in the country, Dr. James Orlowski said he has documented nearly 40 cases where rescuers performing the Heimlich maneuver have caused complications for the victim. Orlowski is chief of pediatrics and pediatric intensive care at University Community Hospital in Tampa.

Some of the victims were children. See for yourself.

In days to come, I'll be taking a closer look at the Esch case and my father's other "miracle cases," some of which are posted on the website of Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute.

My father directs lifeguard Serena Levy as she demonstrates the Heimlich maneuver at Cincinnati's Coney Island pool (source: Cincinnati Enquirer, 7/10/99)