What do I do right now?

Call first, or have someone else call while you start — those are the only two acceptable orders. If you are alone with an adult who has collapsed, call 911 on speaker and start compressions immediately; the dispatcher will coach you through them. If you are alone with a choking or unresponsive infant or child, the guidelines have you give about 2 minutes of care first and then call, because a child’s arrest is usually a breathing problem that immediate care can reverse. Nothing on this page is a substitute for that call.

100 to 120 compressions a minute, for every age — adults, children and infants alike. That is a little over one and a half a second. The easiest way to check yourself mid-CPR is to count your own compressions for 15 seconds: 25 to 30 puts you inside the window. Untrained rescuers overwhelmingly go too slow, and going too fast is its own problem because the chest never refills between compressions.

For an adult, at least 2 inches (5 cm) and no more than 2.4 inches (6 cm). For a child, about 2 inches, and at least one third of the front-to-back depth of the chest. For an infant under 1, about 1.5 inches (4 cm), again at least a third of the chest depth. The upper limit for adults is a real recommendation: past 2.4 inches you add injury without adding blood flow.

Yes, in October 2025. The AHA guidelines now start severe choking in adults and children with 5 back blows, followed by 5 abdominal thrusts, repeated in alternating sets. Previously abdominal thrusts alone were the first maneuver for adults. The change came from observational data showing back blows relieved obstructions more often and injured people less, and from the value of teaching one consistent sequence across all ages. If you learned the old sequence, back blows now come first.

Alternate 5 back blows with 5 chest thrusts, and never give abdominal thrusts. Lay the baby face down along your forearm with the head lower than the chest and the jaw supported, deliver 5 back blows between the shoulder blades, then turn them face up and give 5 chest thrusts with the heel of one hand on the breastbone. Abdominal thrusts on an infant can rupture the liver or spleen, which sit low and largely unprotected at that age.

30 compressions to 2 breaths for an adult, whether there is one rescuer or several. For a child or an infant it is 30:2 if you are alone and 15:2 if there are two of you, because paediatric arrest is usually caused by a breathing problem and the extra ventilations matter. If you are untrained or unwilling to give breaths to an adult, compression-only CPR is explicitly recommended and is far better than doing nothing.

No. The 2025 AHA guidelines removed it. Registry and simulation data showed the two-finger technique almost never reached the required depth. The recommendation now is the two thumb–encircling hands technique, or the heel of one hand if your hands cannot encircle the infant’s chest — the single-hand technique actually produced greater depth in a multicentre observational study.

Every 2 minutes, and the changeover should take under 10 seconds. Depth falls off well before the person doing it feels tired — they will tell you they are fine and their compressions will already be too shallow. The same 10-second rule applies to every other pause: rhythm checks, breaths, moving the person. Pauses are what break the blood flow you have built up.

The labelled strengths are 0.1 mg for 7.5 to 15 kg (about 16.5 to 33 lb), 0.15 mg for 15 to 30 kg (33 to 66 lb), and 0.3 mg from 30 kg (66 lb) up; larger 0.5 mg devices exist in some markets. Those bands are the device indications, not a calculation. In practice you use the device the person was prescribed and carries, whatever this page says — the prescriber weighed more than body weight when choosing it.

Because the answer would be an instruction to prepare and inject a vasopressor without supervision, and because it is not the answer anyone in an anaphylaxis emergency actually needs. What exists in the real world is fixed-strength autoinjectors with a weight threshold. Working out millilitres from an ampoule is a clinical act performed by someone who can verify the concentration in their hand. A calculator that produces that number for an anonymous visitor is producing a hazard, not a service.

If there is no improvement, a second dose is typically given 5 to 15 minutes after the first, and many allergy action plans instruct exactly that — which is why people are usually prescribed two devices. Follow the written plan the prescriber gave, and tell the 911 dispatcher what has already been given and when. Do not decide the interval from a web page.

Yes, in all three situations. After anaphylaxis, a biphasic reaction can return hours later and observation is typically 4 to 6 hours. After abdominal thrusts, the maneuver itself can injure abdominal organs. After any resuscitation, the cause of the arrest has not been treated by the CPR. Recovering completely at the scene is not the end of it.

Yes, and it is the most useful thing on this page. Reading a sequence and performing it on a real body while your hands shake are different skills, and the gap between them is exactly what training closes. The American Heart Association and the Red Cross both run short in-person courses. This page is a reference for someone who has trained, and a last resort for someone who has not.