Chest compression could be enough, says Wong
DR HUGH Wong, consultant emergency physician at the Kingston Public Hospital and director of Emergency Cardiac Care at the Heart Foundation of Jamaica, was equally instructive in his comments as he noted that the unexpected nature of the disease calls for citizens to be informed.
“In terms of the response for somebody who collapses on the field, at work, or other places, a quick response is necessary. If the heart doesn’t restart within three or four minutes, every minute, you lose 10 per cent of your surviving capacity. The chance of you surviving goes down by that much,” Wong said.
“Every layperson needs to know CPR, and that’s what I think is one of the primary thrusts to reduce death, because it is totally unexpected. And because it is unexpected, you don’t know who is going to fall,” he continued
He added, “Even though you still panic, training sets you into an action mode. If you don’t want to put your mouth on somebody, that’s fine. You can always do chest compressions or CPR until somebody comes with that mask, but you need to do chest compressions. However, chest compression alone will not revive somebody if the heart is quivering. You need to stop the heart from quivering, and the only thing that does that so far is to defibrillate the heart, and that is the use of an indigenous machine (automated external defibrillator).”
If you don’t want to put your mouth on someone else’s ...