The Steering Committee of the National Cardiac Arrest Collaborative recently reported on current activities related to the recommendations of the IOM Report: Strategies to Improve Cardiac Arrest Survival – A Time to Act.
Resuscitation quality improvement program, protocols for telecommunicators core components to improve survival rates
How can people brought back from death after cardiac arrest report having experienced lucid and vivid memories and recollections without a functioning brain? The study of near-death experiences is challenging the idea our consciousness fades to black when our body expires.
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He could see a nurse and doctor, a bald, “chunky fella” dressed in blue hospital scrubs. He watched as they frantically worked on his body, which was remarkable, considering he was, essentially, dead.
The man had suffered a cardiac arrest. Normally there is no measurable, meaningful brain activity after the heart stops beating. Within two to 20 seconds the brain “flatlines.”
When someone calls 911, the time it takes for paramedics to arrive can be the difference between life and death.
Minnesota lawmaker Julie Sandstede knows this. She represents a rural area, where ambulances may take longer to arrive on the scene of a medical emergency.
Medical device startup HeartHero was the winner in the Innovation Challenge at the 2019 American College of Cardiology (ACC) conference, March 16-18 in New Orleans, for its ultraportable, affordable and user-friendly automated external defibrillator (AED).
Any connected device these days is a potential target of hackers—and that now includes defibrillators.
Implantable defibrillators made by Minneapolis, Mn.-based Medtronic could allow an attacker to interfere with and collect sensitive data from the devices, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a medical advisory.
A defibrillator is used to treat a life-threatening cardiac event by resetting the electrical state of the heart so that it can beat normally. In Medtronic's case, the defibrillator uses an unsecured protocol to communicate with other devices.
The vulnerability only requires “low skill level,” the DHS advisory said.
Survivors of cardiac arrest are more likely to experience further heart trouble—and even death—if they have symptoms of PTSD when discharged from the hospital, according to a new study from researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
“Because nearly a third of cardiac arrest survivors in our study reported PTSD symptoms, finding treatments that diminish the impact of PTSD symptoms is critical to improving outcomes in survivors,” says study leader Sachin Agarwal, MD, MPH, assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and a critical care neurologist at NewYork-Presbyterian.
Sudden cardiac arrest causes around half of cardiac deaths in Europe and one in five natural deaths. The heart stops pumping after a cardiac arrhythmia (ventricular fibrillation/tachycardia); this is lethal in minutes if untreated. ESCAPE-NET was set up to find the causes of these arrhythmias, so they can be prevented.
Dr Hanno Tan, ESCAPE-NET project leader and cardiologist, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, urged caution when interpreting these results. He said: “The findings need to be replicated in other studies before action should be taken by doctors or patients.”
Reviewing data from a nationwide AED registry, investigators in Copenhagen have found that “Optimization of automated external defibrillator (AED) placement and accessibility are warranted,” according to a study published in Resuscitation.
Researchers identified all OHCAs registered by mobile emergency care units in Copenhagen, Denmark (2008–2016). Information regarding registered AEDs (2007–2016) was retrieved from the nationwide Danish AED Network. They calculated AED coverage (AEDs located ≤200 m route distance from an OHCA) and, according to AED accessibility, the likelihoods of bystander defibrillation and 30-day survival.
