If you can’t breathe after being stuck with phlegm, you need to stay calm and immediately cough and position yourself to drain the phlegm. If choking occurs, you should use the Heimlich maneuver to expel the phlegm and go to the hospital in a timely manner.
If you are stuck with phlegm, you can use the following methods to expel the phlegm if it only causes difficulty in breathing.
1. Coughing: After being stuck with phlegm, you should stabilize your emotions, take deep breaths with maximum strength, and then try to cough out the phlegm continuously, and if necessary, you can drink some warm water to dilute the phlegm, which is conducive to its discharge.
2. Positional drainage: quickly take the head down and feet up position, with hard coughing, to facilitate gravity to make the phlegm drainage out.
3. Auxiliary phlegm expulsion: seek help from others to expel phlegm by passive back patting, pay attention to the strength, from top to bottom, from outside to inside, left and right sides at the same time.
If the phlegm is stuck and suffocation occurs, immediately use the Heimlich method to expel the phlegm blocking the airway. This is done as follows:
Make a fist with one hand and place the thumb side of the fist against the mid-abdominal line area above the umbilicus under the abdominal xiphoid process, grasp the fist with the other hand, and forcefully and quickly impact the fist upward and inward against the diaphragm. If unsuccessful, quickly press the upper abdomen against a hard flat surface, such as the back of a chair, the edge of a table, or a railing, and then forcefully impact the abdomen until the phlegm or foreign material blocking the airway is removed.
While self-rescuing quickly go to the nearest hospital and immediately take treatment such as oxygen and sputum to relieve the hypoxia caused by breath-holding.