Young boy’s life saved by CPR after sudden cardiac arrest
NEW DELHI: Timely intervention by doctors saved a 18-year-old boy's life from sudden cardiac arrest. The teenager had lost his mother and 12-year-old sister to similar malfunction of the heart. The doctor said after giving emergency cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), the teen's grandfather rushed him to the hospital where he was diagnosed with ventricular tachycardia, a rhythm disorder caused by erratic electrical signals for the heart. With the rising number of death due to cardiac arrests, there is a greater need to raise awareness about cardiac diseases, fatalities and the deaths in various age groups.
Prominent cardiologist and electrophysiologist Dr Balbir Singh said, “It is unfortunate that the child lost his family to the same disease. His grandfather applied pressure on his chest when he first started collapsing and then administered CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It was a bold move to get the child time for treatment. We need more people capable of delivering emergency resuscitation procedures as currently only 1 per cent of our population are trained for this."
However, In India, approximately 4,280 out of every one lakh people die every year from SCA. Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is an abrupt, unexpected failure of heart function due to the fast fluttering of the ventricles (chamber of the heart), which does not allow enough blood to be pumped out to the organs which include the brain and the heart itself.
“A cardiac defibrillator, that works as an internal monitor to track increased heart rates caused by erroneous or sudden change in electrical signal impulse and administers shock to the heart to stabilise the heart rate and prevent the death. Moreover, it helps to prevent immediate collapse and gives time to patient to reach the hospital so the percentage of patients surviving the sudden cardiac arrest increases dramatically,” Dr Balbir said.
He also added that after a cardiac arrest, there is about four to six minutes when brain death and death occurs. Chances of survival reduce by 7-10 per cent with every passing minutes. Unfortunately, most Indians are oblivious to this silent epidemic and succumb to sudden cardiac arrests.