CINCINNATI, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- President Bush, who choked on a pretzel and passed out briefly, may have saved his own life by falling on his belly and inadvertently performing an impromptu Heimlich maneuver, experts said Monday.
Dr. Harry Heimlich, the man who developed the widely used lifesaving procedure that bears his name, told United Press International: "The fact that President Bush had bruises on his face indicates that he may have fallen on his face and therefore on his abdomen as well. That could have forced the pretzel blocking his airway out of his throat."
Heimlich said he was speculating as to exactly what happened when the president was watching a football game on television at the White House Sunday evening. Bush said he was eating a pretzel that "didn't seem to go down right" and the next thing he remembered was lying on the floor with his dogs looking at him with worried countenances.
"Of course, there are other possible causes for the president to have lost consciousness," said Heimlich, a former thoracic surgeon who developed the Heimlich maneuver more than a generation ago and now, approaching age 82, heads the Heimlich Institute in Cincinnati.
He said a piece of food, such as the partially chewed pretzel, might have irritated the larynx in the throat or the esophagus, stimulating the autonomic nervous system. That stimulation could have caused a cascade of events, resulting in a spasm in which the airway was momentarily blocked, causing a loss of consciousness.
The president's physician suggested such an event caused Bush to faint.
"That sort of reaction occurs infrequently," said Dr. Brooks Bock, professor and chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Wayne State University in Detroit, "but it does happen."
Noting he had no direct knowledge aside from news accounts of what happened to Bush, Bock told UPI the scenario described by Bush's physician, as well as that suggested by Heimlich are reasonable possibilities.
Heimlich told UPI he thought choking was the most likely occurrence, mainly based on reports Bush lost consciousness. The doctors agreed with the president that to avoid such incidents, people should, in fact, follow their mother's advice.
Bush jokingly told reporters his mother always told him, "When you're eating pretzels, chew before you swallow."
"Once again," Bock said, "(Former first lady) Barbara Bush was on the ball."
Heimlich added, "The president might have been reacting to something during the football game and may have talked to the television screen and that caused the problem with the pretzel."
Another piece of mother's advice -- don't talk with your mouth full of food -- would be wise to follow, said Heimlich, whose simple instructions for choking victims has saved more than 100,000 lives in the United States.
The Heimlich maneuver, placing a fist on the abdomen about midway between the bellybutton and the chest cavity and pushing upward, increases air flow from the lungs through the airway. "This causes a mini-hurricane in the airway and that increased flow of air carries away with it anything that is stuck," he said.
Although most of the time it is a bystander who performs the procedure, Heimlich said people can perform the maneuver on themselves by leaning over a chair or using their own fist to force air through the lungs and out of the airway.
Heimlich said not only is the maneuver saving lives when people are choking on food, it also is being employed more and more by lifeguards to force water out of the lungs of drowning victims.
He said new applications include using the same Heimlich maneuver on patients having an acute asthma attack, helping people having difficulty exhaling by forcing air out of the lungs and along with it mucous plugs that may be blocking airways.
He also said studies are being performed to see if using the Heimlich maneuver a couple of times a week when an asthma patient is not having a crisis will prevent further attacks by keeping the airways open.
(Reported by Ed Susman in West Palm Beach, Fla.)
