Archive - 2010 - Blog entry

Happy Holidays to everyone.  It is always a great feeling to spend the holidays with my family especially after surviving a cardiac arrest.  Best wishes!

I was very excited to be invited to help the Tacoma Fire Department put on their CPR Sunday. It took place on 10/10/10 and is held once a year, Volunteer firefighters and EMTs teach CPR classes. This year was the largest day they ever had...more than 850 people learned CPR. I was able to tell my SCA survivor story before each class.

One common "carve out" for compression-only CPR is "Use full CPR on victims of cardiac arrest secondary to respiratory arrest. A study performed at the University of Phoenix was recently published by Ashish R Panchal et al in the peer-reviewed medical journal Circulation.

One of the problems encountered in trying to convince people that they ought to learn CPR is that many people think it's not relevant to them.
We keep looking for new ways to help people realize that cardiac arrests are realities that happen to people they know and that they might someday be the person who has the responsibility of keeping the heart and brain alive until the medics get there.
Here's one of the more recent suggestions.
"Write down a list of your family members, your friends, and your acquaintances. Divide the number of names on that list by 7 - that's the number of people on that list that will witness at least one sudden cardiac arrest in their lifetime.

I thought I had heard of all the reasons given by people for not being willing to learn CPR. But Christine Lind - SLICC's Director of Skidaway Operations - shared one with me yesterday that still has my head shaking.
The person had told Christine that they didn't want to learn CPR because they didn't want to someday have the responsibility for whether a person lived or died.

Today is the day on which the 2010 changes to the BLS protocols are to be announced. The rampant speculation is that the ratio of compressions to rescue breaths will change (go up) for full CPR and that the applicability of compression-only CPR will be expanded.
In the midst of all this focus on the specific numbers - particularly for us who have training materials to modify - it is important to realize that the getting trained / non getting trained and act / don't act decisions are far more important than the updating of the details of the protocol. And this becomes more relevant when you recall that the victim you see arrest is most likely to be a family member, a friend, or an acquaintance.

Would you do something where it was well documented that one out of every eight people who do it die? Of course not.

Now picture your family members, friends, and acquaintances in an auditorium. Picture what that crowd looks like - your family and close friends are closest to the podium on the stage where you are standing. You look at each one, one at a time. Behind them are all the people you see on a regular basis - neighbors, co-workers, etc. Would you do something that had a one in eight chance of killing one of them? Before you say "Of course not," read on.

October is National Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness Month, dedicated to educating the public about sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and how to preven

Runner Has Cardiac Arrest at Ten Miler Event
Posted: Sep 25, 2010 7:25 PMUpdated: Sep 25, 2010 7:25 PM
Lynchburg, VA- Lynchburg LifeSaving Crew says one male runner had a full cardiac arrest during the race on Saturday.
Lynchburg Fire department and Lynchburg Life Saving Crew members performed CPR on the man. Officials say they had to give him a shock to help restart his heart
The man was taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. And, officials say he is ok at this time.

THE SHORT FORM:When someone gets hit hard in the chest in the area of the heart, cardiac arrest can result. This is one source of cardiac arrest in young athletes. Only about a quarter of these victims survive. Those that do survive are associated with immediate CPR and prompt defibrillation. Congenital defects can also cause these events.