DaytonDailyNews.com

The biggest use of the Heimlich maneuver for drowning rescues was when Jeff Ellis & Associates' lifeguards throughout the country tried it before CPR in 1995-99. They revived 147 of 152 "unconscious, nonbreathing" drowning victims, in Dr. Henry Heimlich's words.

Even the Ellis researchers couldn't say whether CPR would have improved on that 97 percent rate, however, and nobody has independently scrutinized their records.

"It's clearly published," Heimlich said. "I have it from their Web site."

The www.jellis.com Web site contains brief summaries of 1996 and '97 rescues, but nothing with such basic research elements as methods, results, data charts and conclusions.

The research notes themselves are "just a bunch of scribbles on a grid sheet," said B. Chris Brewster, lifesaving commissioner of the International Life Saving Federation, after someone from Ellis showed them to him at a conference. Rescued victims were noted only as unconscious, he said.

"But unconscious doesn't necessarily mean nonbreathing," Brewster said. "They may have revived 97 percent of people who were already breathing. That's unlikely, of course, but you don't know from the data."

Others wonder if they were even unconscious. Their average time under water was 29 seconds. "People can hold their breath longer than that," said former Coast Guard drowning authority Dr. Alan Steinman.

In such a rescue, "you could probably jump on their toes and wake them up," said Dr. Robert Baratz, president of the National Council Against Health Fraud.

Without seeing the original data, Baratz said nobody can know why those 147 people didn't drown.

"Any respectable scientist — when somebody says, 'Can I please look at your data and reanalyze it?' — would say, 'Sure, here are my notebooks and data books,'" Baratz said.

Why, then, hasn't Heimlich done that? "I don't have a medical organization that has the people to do that," he said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2129 or klamb@DaytonDailyNews.com.