Airway

Ventilating agonal breathing

Agonal breaths are ineffective gasps—rate and often volume are already inadequate. Matching those gasps or “assisting” them leaves the patient hypoventilated.

Take over with a bag-valve mask at a proper adult rate ( about one breath every five seconds ), deliver each breath over roughly one second, and stop at visible chest rise. Avoid two-second squeezes and oversized volumes that raise the chest several inches.