INCREASING CPR TRAINING TO SAVE LIVES
“If CPR, shorthand for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, is immediately applied when an electrical malfunction causes a person’s heart to stop, chances of survival, although small, are doubled or tripled. ”
IN August, Jeffrey Feig, a 50-year-old financial executive in Manhattan and father of three young sons, became one of the more than 350,000 Americans who each year suffer a sudden cardiac arrest. His heart went into an erratic and ineffective rhythm and he stopped breathing.
But unlike 90 percent of people similarly afflicted, Feig not only lived to tell the tale but survived his neardeath experience without any damage to his heart muscle or his brain, an outcome rarely seen following an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Feig owes his life and bright future to the forward thinking, planning and participation of fellow residents at Pine Lake Park, a bungalow colony in Cortlandt Manor, New York, where he and his family spend the summer. The moment he collapsed, fellow vacationers who had been trained at the colony in CPR and the use of an automated external defibrillator, or AED, sprang into action.
One person called for an ambulance, another began chest compressions, a third provided mouth-tomouth ventilation while a fourth ran into the social hall to get the defibrillator, which was used to shock his heart back to a normal, lifesaving rhythm. Just two weeks before this incident, the colony had conducted a training and refresher course in these lifesaving measures.
If not for his lay rescuers, Feig would most likely not have survived. It took the ambulance 10 minutes to arrive; without oxygen, the brain is permanently damaged after about 4 minutes and death follows a few minutes later. But moments after receiving the shock from the AED, which enabled his heart to again pump oxygen-rich blood to his brain and body, Feig regained consciousness.
“I feel like I’ve been given a second chance at life and I’m not going to waste it,” he told me. “My goal is to spread the word to increase the level of CPR training in the population and get every institution to have a defibrillator on hand and people trained to use it.” He’s already begun working with organizations in his Upper West Side neighborhood to make this lifesaving training and equipment more widely available.
A study in Denmark published last year linked bystander CPR to a 30 percent lower risk of nursing home admission and brain damage in survivors of cardiac arrest outside of a hospital.
If CPR, shorthand for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, is immediately applied when an electrical malfunction causes a person’s heart to stop, chances of survival, although small, are doubled or tripled.
Given that 70 percent of cardiac arrests occur at home, a family member or friend is most likely the beneficiary of bystander CPR. At the very least, housemates of people with known cardiac risk factors — like smoking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity or a prior heart attack — should learn CPR and review the training every two years.
In the 40-odd years since I learned CPR at The New York Times, the American Heart Association has simplified the technique while barely compromising its effectiveness. Although an in-person class with practice on a mannequin is ideal, the current method can be used by untrained people and learned via a brief online video at HandsOnly CPR. For those unwilling or unable to do mouth-to-mouth breathing, the latest technique focuses on critical chest compressions, which — when done correctly — can get blood flowing through the heart and to the brain.
Have someone call 9-1-1 while you start chest compressions, pressing hard and fast at the center of the chest at a rate of 100-120 compressions a minute. You can use the beat of the song “Stayin’ Alive” to achieve the desired rhythm, depressing the chest of an adult at least 2 inches and, without removing your hands, letting the chest rebound between compressions.
If you or a second person is able to perform rescue breathing, two breaths should be administered for every 30 compressions.
The next step would be to restore the heart’s normal rhythm using an AED. To minimize damage, the heartbeat should be restored within five minutes or less of a sudden cardiac arrest. Every minute that passes without this correction reduces the person’s survival chances by 10 percent.
Fear of making a mistake should not be an impediment — Good Samaritan laws in every state and the federal Cardiac Arrest Survival Act help to minimize a lay rescuer’s liability. The alternative is standing by helplessly and watching someone die while you await the arrival of emergency medical personnel.