Cardiac Arrest Will Kill You Instantly
If the cardiac rhythm falls out of step, all body organs will fail. So, doctors do their utmost to avoid cardiac arrest.
Cardiac arrest is not what it sounds like. It doesn't mean the heart completely stops, but instead it quivers and jerks, never quite managing to complete a single proper beat. A heart in this state cannot pump blood about the body, meaning that all body organs lose their oxygen supply, and without oxygen, the organs will fail one after the other.
When doctors massage the heart of a patient in cardiac arrest, they do so to force blood about the body. They add pressure to the heart ventricles, so their contents of blood are forced into the blood vessels of the body. If they manage to make the heart pump again, the next step is preventing another cardiac arrest. The solution could be placing a pacemaker under the patient’s skin, which emits slight electric shocks that make the heart’s muscles contract regularly and pump blood into the body.
Now there's a new type of pacemaker – an electric membrane that wraps around the heart. The membrane is studded with sensors that sound the alarm if they measure sudden fluctuations of the heart’s condition, subsequently kick-starting electric impulses that send the heart back on track.