Food Asphyxiation — Restaurant Rescue

Abstract

IT has been 10 years since Haugen1 demonstrated that sudden deaths during meals — falsely labeled "heart attacks" — are usually due to choking on a large piece of meat. Four years earlier Helpern2 was surprised to learn how often the physician, deluded by the suddenness of death, did not suspect choking and attributed death to coronary thrombosis.Though accurately described in numerous lay publications, this lethal emergency has received scanty recognition in the medical literature. This neglect may explain why a physician in a restaurant recently tried desperately and unsuccessfully to give a choking victim mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which is . . .