Learn how to save a life
Project Heart Start Program to host its health fair
What skill is more important than knowing CPR? On Saturday, June 18, the Project Heart Start Program is having its health fair from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.
The event will be held in Rio Rancho at the Cabezon Community Center and Park, and in Albuquerque at North Domingo Baca Multigenerational Center with sessions beginning at 8 a.m.
“What I hope is that people will say, I’m going to take an hour to learn how to save a life,” Dr. Barry Ramo said. “We teach these four life-saving skills in how to do CPR, how to use the automated defibrillator, how to save a choking victim, and also how to recognize the signs of a heart attack.”
This event is used to raise awareness of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and the signs of a heart attack.
“It takes about an hour to train people and while they are there. There will be some heart health displays where they can learn about nutrition and get their blood pressure taken,” Ramo said. “We also have a climbing wall for little kids and some stuff for children to do.”
PHS is a program focused on teaching lifesaving skills to all able individuals in New Mexico including performing compression-only CPR, the correct utilization of automated external defibrillators, saving victims from choking and recognizing the symptoms of a heart attack and how to react.
“Compression-only means that you don’t do any breathing and there’s no mouth-to-mouth respiration,” Ramo said. “I know people are worried about COVID and really don’t want to do rescue breathing, that is really not part of the program or training, we’re training is what’s called compression-only CPR.”
Their goal is creating a sustainable program that can be showcased by a large group of volunteers and trained responders to an organization.
Since their first program in 2011, they have remained focused and have trained hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans.
“In total up to this point, we’ve trained 230,000 people, so this event really highlights the fact that we have this program,” Ramo said.
Though cardiac arrest can happen on a whim, it always helps when your best friend knows CPR.
Mary Beth El Gouhary and Marlene Naranjo had been dancing at the senior center when El Gouhary collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital.
“So about two weeks before I collapsed on the dance floor with a cardiac arrest, Marlene had learned how to do compressions only CPR and use an AED, so she immediately rushed to my side and began compressions,” El Gouhary said.
“They said I had turned gray and so she continued compression while someone brought an AED,” El Gouhary said. “She hooked me up to the machine and then it tells you what to do, so when they hooked me up to the machine, they gave me one shock and my heart’s beating and I started breathing.”
Thankfully, Naranjo quickly sprung into action.
“She is the only one that started compression and that saved my life,” El Gouhary said. “So after that, she and her sister and myself, took the training to train other people in Project Heart Start.”
After this, the EMT’s arrived and El Gouhary was luckily taken to the hospital.
“They found that I had four blocked arteries, which had caused my cardiac arrest and needed surgery,” El Gouhary said. “I am alive today nine years later because Marlene had taken the course and Project Heart Start compression with those. Had they left it to the MPs I wouldn’t be talking to you right now because they arrived much later.”
Over 350,000 people suffer an out of hospital sudden cardiac arrest in America every year and a person suffering a SCA has less than a 10% chance of surviving.
“What happens to people who have a sudden cardiac arrest is that the heart rhythm becomes chaotic, and when that happens, the circulation basically stops,” Ramo said. “In order to have the patient survive, the heart has to be shocked and that’s where the automated external defibrillator comes up.”
In Las Vegas, Nevada, casinos where CPR is initiated immediately, and AED is often use in less than 3 minutes, survival is greater than 60%. These statistics show that hearts leading to SCA out of the hospital is not usually a “massive heart attack” but rather a lethal heart rhythm that when corrected with an AED can save a live often with little heart damage.
“An out of hospital cardiac arrest has a survival rate of only 10%, so if people live in communities where people know CPR, that survival rate can double or even triple,” Ramo said. “The key to success after you have a cardiac arrest relates to the fact that people have to begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation as quickly as possible because if you wait more than 10 minutes, the survival rate is almost zero.”
Half of patients suffering a heart attack die before they reach a hospital.
As over 60,000 people die in the US each year from choking, their course teaches how to recognize a choking victim and how to perform the Heimlich maneuver to relieve the obstructed airway.
“So the way to deal with this problem with our program is to train as many people as possible and that’s the goal for Project Heart Start,” Ramo said. “This really highlights what we are doing. But it’s really part of an overall program.”
Importantly, in 2015, PHS initiated the passage of a law by the New Mexico Legislature signed by the Governor making use of the AED protected under the Good Samaritan Act.
In 2016, PHS was behind getting a law passed and signed by the governor which mandates the elements of Project Heart Start being trained in the school.
“In order to graduate from high school, you have to take a CPR class, which has the elements of Project Heart Start,” Ramo said. “The elements of Project Heart Start are more than just CPR, they teach you how to stabilize, how to recognize the signs of a heart attack, how to treat a choking victim.”
This bill requires that the four elements of their course be taught to all high school students throughout the state as a requirement.
“Studies have shown that if you train the high school students, that the survival of those communities are much higher, probably double than they are in other communities,” Ramo said. “So that’s another item that we are trying to promote, but this is really a celebration of Project Heart Start wanting to make people aware of sudden cardiac arrest and aware of our program.
Thousands of people have been trained in workplace, social organizations and other venues where people congregate.
PHS will offer programs in English, Spanish and Native American languages and the goal is to have at least 30% of the people living in the state trained by Project Heart Start by 2022.
“The majority of people who have cardiac arrest have coronary artery disease, and 80% of second heart attacks are related to lifestyle,” Ramo said. “The diet that we recommend is the Mediterranean diet which is more plant-based diet.”
Though it may be hard to put down the comfort foods, it could save a life, Ramo said.
“About 50% of foods that you eat are fruits and vegetables, which are going to have chicken and fish, less red meat, more olive oil instead of butter or mayonnaise,” Ramo said. “Whole grains instead of refined grains and very little processed food. So it’s really a lifestyle issue.”