Emergency Cardiac Care News Digest is an assortment of current events and news related to emergency cardiac care and resuscitation. Produced by Code One Training Solutions, Emergency Cardiac Care News Digest is published every Friday throughout the year.
True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.
Arthur Ashe
Bill that would save lives from cardiac arrest in schools clears House
Cardiac arrest survivors, families, American Heart Association praise HEARTS Act passage, urge swift Senate action.
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 23, 2024 — The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the Cardiomyopathy Health Education, Awareness, Research and Training in Schools (HEARTS) Act, which would help ensure students, staff and school visitors are prepared to respond to a cardiac emergency. The American Heart Association, which is celebrating 100 years of lifesaving service as the world’s leading voluntary organization focused on heart and brain health, has touted this bipartisan legislation as a key strategy for accomplishing its goal to double the chance of survival from cardiac arrest. Swift action by the U.S. Senate is now needed to save more lives.
The HEARTS Act would improve the chain of survival in elementary and secondary schools nationwide by creating a grant program at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support CPR and automated external defibrillator (AED) training. The bill also supports the purchase of AEDs and the development of cardiac emergency response plans, which can more than double survival rates from cardiac arrest by empowering people nearby to dial 911, start CPR and use an AED. In schools with AEDs, children who experience cardiac arrest are seven times as likely to survive as children in schools without AEDs.
Read on and take action: https://newsroom.heart.org/news/bill-that-would-save-lives-from-cardiac-arrest-in-schools-clears-house
Bills’ Damar Hamlin talks about new heart health mission with NFL
Hamlin and the NFL’s Smart Heart Sports coalition announced the launch of a new program to get more automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, into schools and playing fields.
On GMA: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/culture/video/bills-damar-hamlin-talks-new-heart-health-mission-113921444
Related: In collaboration with leading AED companies Coro Medical and Avive Solutions, Inc., the program aims to broadly expand access to this life-saving equipment and protect students and young athletes of all ages from fatalities resulting from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), a leading cause of death of young people.
Read More: https://www.smartheartsports.com/aeds-for-youth
Webinar: How T-Mobile Raised the Bar on AED Safety
An EHS Today exclusive case study featuring Yasmin Armstrong, Senior Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Program Manager at T-Mobile. Yasmin will share how T-Mobile enhanced employee safety by implementing virtual CPR training during COVID-19 and deploying a cutting-edge AED monitoring system across 240+ devices.
Learn more: https://www.ehstoday.com/webinars/webinar/55140950/how-t-mobile-raised-the-bar-on-aed-safety
Honda North Dealership successfully revive staff member not breathing
DANVERS – Danvers Fire Department responded to a distress call at Honda North Dealership to an employee who collapsed.
The Honda North staff immediately began to preform CPR on the staff member, luckily the dealership had its own Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) and applied it to the fallen staff member. Once applied, the AED had analyzed and delivered a shock to the staff member that successfully restored their heart to a normal and effective rhythm.
ENCORE: Takeaways from the ‘most-watched cardiac arrest in the history of humankind’
The emergency physicians who resuscitated Damar Hamlin share their insights into SCA and CPR training.
University of Cincinnati School of Medicine Emergency Physicians Bentley Woods Curry, MD; and Jason McMullan, MD, shared insights into the “most-watched cardiac arrest in the history of humankind,” the NFL’s on-field Emergency Action Plan, and the unique considerations in treating sudden cardiac arrest in athletes.
“You don’t rise to your top level of performance; you fall to your level of training.”— Jason McMullan, MD
“Just put the pads on. If you have an AED, use it. Don’t let your lying eyes tell you something else.” — Bentley Woods Curry, MD
DeWitt 5th grader wins Super Bowl tickets for learning CPR
A fifth grader from DeWitt won two tickets to the Super Bowl LIX as a part of the American Heart Association’s Kids Heart Challenge program.
Duke University Partners on Drone First Responder Study
The Center for Resuscitation Science at Karolinska Institutet, in collaboration with Duke University, USA, participated in a research exchange on the use of drones as first responders in cases of cardiac arrest. During a symposium in Gothenburg, researchers and emergency services from both Sweden and the US shared their experiences and discussed future possibilities to improve prehospital rescue systems using drone technology.
More details: https://www.miragenews.com/duke-university-partners-on-drone-first-1321203/
Awesome CPR marathon effort helps raise more than £1,700 for defibrillator charity
An incredible CPR marathon, which lasted well over 24 hours, helped raise more than £1,700 for a vital local charity.
Scott Woodhead, who has run the Shaw-based Sports Physio UK business for over a decade with Dave Sedgewick, set up the ‘Defibrillators Saves Lives’ charity in February this year with Pat Highly after her son Gary suffered a near-tragic cardiac arrest.
Gary’s life was saved by the timely availability of a defibrillator and CPR by his good friend Rob.
Scott said: “I helped organise, as part of our 12-year birthday celebration, a 26.2 hour CPR Marathon to help raise funds and awareness for the charity Pat and I set up.”
How one family’s tragedies helped unlock a cause of sudden cardiac arrest
Sudden cardiac arrest hits some 60,000 Canadians out of hospital each year. The heart abruptly stops beating, blood circulation and breathing halts, and when it happens outside a hospital, it’s fatal in about 90 per cent of those cases.
While there are sometimes prior warning signs, such as fainting when exercising, in many cases sudden cardiac arrest is completely unexpected. Tests on survivors often don’t reveal an explanation, leaving people searching for answers.
That was the case for nearly three decades for Lauren Philion and her family in southwestern Ontario.
In the early 1990s, after collapsing on three previous occasions, her sister Jennifer died of a sudden cardiac arrest at the age of 18. In 2016, her brother Peter collapsed and died while playing baseball. He was 34 and recently married.
In between those two tragedies, Philion herself survived a sudden cardiac arrest, collapsing at an aerobics class when she was in her early 30s.
Access the full article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/sudden-cardiac-arrest-genetics-calcium-release-deficiency-1.7324840
Salute to Heroes: Davidson County man saves neighbor’s life with CPR
DAVIDSON COUNTY, North Carolina (WXII) — The American Red Cross is awarding a Salute to Heroes award to a man who took life-saving actions to help a friend and neighbor during a medical emergency near the Lexington/Thomasville city line in the spring of 2023.
Jason Gibson performed CPR on Tim Crook after he collapsed from doing yard work at the top of a hill on Cunningham Brickyard Road. Crook said doctors later told him he suffered cardiac arrest and his heart “got out of rhythm.”
Crook was hospitalized for a week and missed six weeks of work but survived and was healthy enough to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding two months after the April 29 incident.
Entire story: https://abc17news.com/cnn-regional/2024/09/20/salute-to-heroes-davidson-county-man-saves-neighbors-life-with-cpr/
New approach to defibrillation may improve cardiac arrest outcomes OHSU study results suggest placing defibrillation pads in the front, back could improve dire survival rate — less than one in 10 people nationwide.
Joshua Lupton, M.D., has no memory of his own cardiac arrest in 2016. He only knows that first responders resuscitated his heart with a shock from a defibrillator, ultimately leading to his complete recovery and putting him among fewer than one in 10 people nationwide who survive cardiac arrest outside of a hospital.
He attributes his survival to the rapid defibrillation he received from first responders — but not everybody is so fortunate.
Now, as lead author on a new observational study published in the journal JAMA Network Open, he and co-authors from Oregon Health & Science University say the study suggests the position in which responders initially place the two defibrillator pads on the body may make a significant difference in returning spontaneous blood circulation after shock from a defibrillator.
Full story: https://news.ohsu.edu/2024/09/20/new-approach-to-defibrillation-may-improve-cardiac-arrest-outcomes
Children saved their mum’s life after cardiac arrest
A brother and sister have been praised by the Scottish Ambulance Service for their quick-thinking that saved their mother’s life.
Oliver and Arianna Liddle found mum, Donna, 38, lying on the bathroom floor of their Aberdeen home after she suffered a cardiac arrest
Arianna, nine, dialled 999 for help while Oliver, 11, put his mother in the recovery position.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0gd2e65nlo
Double Sequential External Defibrillation: A First-Hand Account of a First-Time User
The Missoula Fire Dept. details a resuscitation attempt involving double sequential external defibrillation on a patient in refractory V-fib.
Levi Morris was an in-house instructor educating other firefighters on new respiratory epinephrine protocols. Just days after brushing up on the protocol himself and teaching it to multiple crews over the course of a week, Levi found himself staring at an exhausted four-year-old patient at a walk-in clinic with stridor at rest, poor skin signs, and impending respiratory failure.
In February of 2024, the Missoula (MT) Fire Department (MFD) updated some medication protocols for pediatric respiratory distress. Levi leaned on his training that week and the patient improved significantly after arriving at the hospital. Levi walked away from one of his most terrifying calls with affirming the third law of fire superstition, “be careful what you train for.”
More to the story: https://www.jems.com/patient-care/double-sequential-external-defibrillation-a-first-hand-account-of-a-first-time-user/
ENCORE: Not All Schools Are Equipped with Life-Saving AEDs
The leading cause of death in student athletes is cardiac arrest, but many schools don’t have AEDs.
Video story: https://www.investigatetv.com/video/2024/09/06/beating-clock-not-all-schools-are-equipped-with-life-saving-aeds/
SPOTLIGHT: The Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Association
The Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Association is the preeminent organization improving the lives of those with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, HCM, preventing untimely deaths and advancing global understanding. Founded in 1996 they are committed to providing support, education, advocacy and advancing research, understanding and care to those with HCM.
Learn more: https://4hcm.org/
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