Whether or not you’re trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), you still can help a person who suddenly collapses on the street, the American Heart Association said on Monday.

The recommendations published in the AHA’s journal Circulation, emphasized “hands-only” CPR, a simple procedure that does not involve the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation part of CPR.

“The thing that’s killing people is inaction. You only have to do two things. Call 911 and push hard and fast on the middle of the person’s chest,” said Dr. Michael Sayre, an emergency medicine professor at Ohio State University who headed the committee that made the recommendation, the Associated Press reports.

This kind of CPR should be taken only for adults who suddenly collapse, breathless and unresponsive. If the heart stops, the victim still has ample air in the lungs and blood and compressions keep flowing to the brain, heart and other organs. Brain deaths begin four to six minutes after a person suffers sudden cardiac arrest if no CPR or defibrillation is given.

In children’s case, it’s better to use mouth-to-mouth breathing because they might have breathing problems. Also, the technique should be used in adults who suffer lack of oxygen from a near-drowning, drug overdose, or carbon monoxide poisoning. These people need mouth-to-mouth to pump up air into their lungs and bloodstream.

Hands-only CPR involves uninterrupted chest presses, 100 a minute, until paramedics take over or an automated external defibrillator is available to restore a normal heart rhythm. The pressure should be applied to the center of the chest, between the two nipples of the victim.

“Today in the United States, less than a third of victims of sudden cardiac arrest get any form of CPR. Anything that would increase that is bound to save lives. We want the general public to know that even if they’ve never been trained, they can help victims of sudden cardiac arrest,” Dr. Sayre said.

About 310,000 adults in the United States die annually from sudden cardiac arrest that takes place away from a hospital setting, according to the heart association. Doctors believe that CPR administered by a bystander could double or triple a person’s chance of surviving.

Nearly 94 percent of sudden cardiac arrest victims die before reaching a hospital and up to 80 percent of sudden cardiac arrests occur at home, the AHA said.

The new recommendation for hands-only CPR is an update to 2005 American Heart Association guidelines, which said bystanders should use compression-only CPR if they were unwilling or unable to provide breaths.

Other heart experts welcomed the new guidelines. Dr. Chris Barton, acting chief of the Emergency Department at San Francisco General Hospital, for example, said the latest research on CPR supports the notion that in the critical minutes before an ambulance or defibrillation device arrives, it is very important to provide uninterrupted, deep chest compressions.

“You want the chest to go down about 2 inches. I weigh 160 pounds, and when I do this I put about half my weigh into it,” he said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.