How can a patient’s family carry a patient with respiratory distress?

  Acute attacks of asthma and COPD are still common and frequent in respiratory and emergency departments, and each attack is accompanied by breathing difficulties of varying severity. Those who have mild symptoms and speak in sentences can usually go to the hospital by themselves; however, those who have severe symptoms and speak in words cannot go to the hospital alone and need to be sent to the hospital by family members or neighbors or friends. If the patient’s residence has an elevator or bungalow, it is relatively easy to move or assist, but if it is a small high-rise building, no elevator, and the patient cannot go downstairs by himself, moving the patient is a big problem, and the usual practice is that the escort directly carries the patient downstairs, so this seems to be a reasonable practice?  The answer is no – it’s not. Because these patients have difficulty breathing, in order to ensure the body’s oxygen supply and the elimination of carbon dioxide, need to increase the respiratory rate, fully open the thorax, there may be auxiliary respiratory muscles involved in breathing, if walking on the back of the patient, the patient covered on the back of the escort, the thorax activity is limited, can not fully open, restrict the patient’s breathing, the end result is to aggravate the patient’s condition, and even promote death.  For this type of patients I suggest that the carrier can use the following methods of transport, if a single person transport, you can use the reverse back method (or piggyback back daughter-in-law style) so that the patient and the escort back to back back back, so as not to limit the patient’s thoracic mobility; if a double or multi-person transport, you can let the patient sit on a chair fixed after lifting downstairs, so that the patient sitting position is conducive to thoracic activities, while the double lower limbs droop to reduce the return Cardiac blood volume, reduce the cardiopulmonary fluid load, which is conducive to patient oxygenation, and win time and opportunity for rehabilitation.