PORTLAND — During February, American Heart Month, the American Heart Association urges all Maine families to learn the lifesaving skill of CPR.

With more than 350,000 people experiencing cardiac arrests outside of a hospital, including 23,000 children, CPR is a critical skill that kids as young as 9 years old can learn.

Families can take an online CPR course, learn and practice Hands-Only CPR with a CPR Anytime Training Kit, watch a 60-second video to learn Hands-Only CPR, or find a Heartsaver certification course near them.

There are three main types of CPR: Traditional, Child and Infant and Hands-Only.

• Traditional CPR is the method that combines chest compressions 2 inches in depth at the rate of 100-120 beats per minute with two breaths.

• Infant and Child CPR is similar to traditional CPR but has some key differences. Child CPR is performed with chest compressions at the depth of two inches with one or two hands, followed by two breaths. Infant CPR is performed with chest compressions at the dept of 1 1/2 inches with two fingers, followed by two breaths and repeat.

• Hands-Only CPR is chest compression-only CPR and has been shown to be equally effective as traditional CPR in the first few minutes of emergency response. It involves two simple steps that can be learned from a 60-second video available at heart.org/handsonlycpr.

For more information, visit heart.org.

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