The Maneuver

November 17, 2006 (WLS) -- The Heimlich has become a brand name, like the Band-Aid. Dr. Henry Heimlich claims to have invented the technique in which you stand behind a choking victim, wrap your arms around them and pull sharply on their lower abdomen. Dr. Heimlich is medical advisor for a suburban Chicago charity called the Save-A-Life Foundation. Questions are being raised about both Heimlich and the founder of Save-A-Life, Carol Spizzirri.

The maneuver is so universally known that it is currently seen in a bank commercial which was shown by Dr. Henry Heimlich during a recent speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. But the Heimlich hasn't always been the prescribed method of helping someone who is choking.

As a country doctor in the movie Field of Dreams showed, back slaps were for decades the favored way to clear an airway blockage. The I-Team has learned that back slaps are back.

The American Red Cross, the nation's leading first aid organization, no longer supports the use of the Heimlich maneuver as the initial response when someone begins choking. Last spring, in a surprisingly under-publicized change, the Red Cross mandated its instructors to teach several sharp slaps to the back when someone begins choking, which induces them to cough.

"Research has shown that a series of five of each together is the most proven mechanism for releasing obstructed items from conscious children and adults," said Martha Dittmar, American Red Cross.

The Red Cross recommends Heimlich's abdominal thrust only if back slaps fail. That is the opposite of what the Save-A-Life Foundation continues to teach to thousands of school children in Chicago and several other states.

"We have trained this year alone, in the Chicago Public Schools alone, 67,000 children," said Carol Spizzirri, Save-A-Life Foundation.

Spizzirri is the founder of Save-A-Life. She claims to have a nursing degree and be a registered nurse, but state officials say their records show that neither is true. When the I-Team challenged her qualifications, Spizzirri walked out on our interview and has since declined numerous offers to supply evidence of her medical training and licensing.

A Spizzirri spokesman did e-mail a statement fully supporting the Heimlich method, which is hardly surprising, because Spizzirri enlisted Dr. Henry Heimlich as the medical advisor of Save-A-Life.

Heimlich has rejected the Red Cross' downgrading of his maneuver for choking and continues urging that it be used for other things as well, including drowning.

"The Heimlich maneuver can drive the water out. The Heimlich maneuver will stop an asthma attack," said Heimlich.

Heimlich also urges the maneuver be used on cystic fibrosis victims, all claims that have stunned the medical community and major medical organizations, which warn that the use of the Heimlich maneuver in those situations could be fatal.

The American Lung Association asked Chicago respiratory expert Dr. John Shannon to speak with us.

"It shouldn't be used at all in asthma in cystic fibrosis or any chronic inflation disorder in the lung passages," said Dr. John Shannon, Stroger Cook County Hospital ."There is a good possibility of making a person with asthma substantially worse."

Dr. Heimlich has spent his career in Cincinnati where the maneuver was introduced and promoted more than 30 years ago.

The I-Team visited the impressive-sounding Heimlich Institute, which exists to promote Heimlich and his maneuver, on the accounting floor of a Cincinnati office. We found the office, with no one in it, the phone answered by a machine.

The hospital that houses Heimlich's so-called Institute did not answer the I-Team's numerous requests for information about its relationship with Dr. Heimlich.

The 86-year-old Heimlich asked the I-Team for a list of questions about his relationship with Save-A-Life and the downgrading of his maneuver by the Red Cross. Chuck Goudie personally delivered the letter to his Cincinnati condo and handed it to his wife. Heimlich has since refused a television interview.

A public relations firm sent the I-Team a statement in which Heimlich says he became involved in Save-A-Life because he admired its mission and that his choking maneuver has saved thousands of lives.

Heimlich says he hasn't actually practiced medicine for more than 30 years since leaving the Jewish hospital here where he was chief of surgery. Neither the hospital nor Heimlich would disclose why they parted. He no longer has a medical license, but he and the Save-A-Life Foundation where he is medical advisor continue to advocate a wider use of the maneuver for drowning and asthma.

"His methods he is espousing have never been proven medically. There have never been controlled studies to show any of them work," said Robert Baratz, National Council Against Health Fraud.

In a press release Friday, the Save-A-Life Foundation said, in part, that it "stands by its excellent reputation as provider of first aid skills training and a good steward of the monies entrusted to us by taxpayers and private donors."

Over the past 10 years, Save-A-Life says, it has "carefully documented its training of hundreds of thousands of children K through 12, with many accounts of individual lives saved as a result.

"In addition, Save-A-Life says it has been at the forefront of efforts to protect the Good Samaritan law and introduced legislation, subsequently passed by the Illinois senate, to improve public safety by requiring all first responders receive training."

So there is no confusion, the Save-A-Life Foundation that we are investigating, is not connected to "Operation Save-A-Life," which is a fire and carbon monoxide safety effort by the Chicago Fire Department and ABC7.

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