Could YOU save your loved one from death if they collapsed in front of you?

Mark Cunnington remembers with terrible clarity the moment his 13-year- old son, Matt, stopped breathing. the author from Hastings, East Sussex, was woken in the middle of the night by a strange gasping sound coming from the bathroom.

‘i found Matt convulsing on the floor and dragged him out to the landing, while screaming at my wife, karen, to call an ambulance,’ recalls Mark, 55.

‘as i laid him down, and while i was still cradling him in my arms, he let out a loud, rasping noise and then stopped breathing. His eyes became fixed and he was just staring at the ceiling. i shouted to karen, who was on the phone to the ambulance service.’

unknown to the family at the time, the previously healthy and super-fit teen had suffered a cardiac arrest.

‘it was a moment of sheer panic,’ says Mark. ‘i was completely lost — i had no idea what to do as neither karen nor i had learned first aid or CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation). it was horrendous.’

During a cardiac arrest, the electrical signals that normally keep the heart beating in a co-ordinated, regular rhythm become disrupted. this leaves the heart unable to beat properly and it quivers. Blood is no longer pumped around the body, and the brain and organs become starved of oxygen, rapidly resulting in brain death and organ failure.

it can be caused by a heart attack (where blood supply to the heart is disrupted), problems with the heart’s valves (which keep blood flowing in one direction) or genetic conditions that trigger abnormal heart rhythms.

around 60,000 Britons have a cardiac arrest every year outside of hospital and only a fraction survive — and experts say this i s partly due to bystanders simply not knowing what to do when someone stops breathing.

Someone who has suffered a cardiac arrest needs immediate CPR (although always call 999 before starting resuscitation). this involves pressing repeatedly on the chest, to a depth of around 6cm and at around 100-120 compressions per minute, roughly the same beat as the Bee gees’ song, Stayin’ alive. (giving rescue breaths — mouth-to-mouth — is also recommended for those who know how).

CPR keeps blood flowing to the brain, and ensures a blood supply to the heart, helping it stay in a ‘shockable’ rhythm, i.e. still quivering.

ONCE it stops quivering, there are no longer any electrical signals in the heart (also known as flatlining). once the heart has entered this state it cannot be returned to a normal rhythm with a defibrillator, and the chances of survival are slim.

Every minute without CPR or defibrillation (a defibrillator uses an electric shock to kickstart the heart back into normal rhythm) reduces the chance of survival by 10 per cent.

‘if there is no resuscitation, after six or seven minutes, the brain is usually very damaged and someone probably won’t survive,’ says Professor Eric rosenthal, consultant paediatric cardiologist at Evelina Children’s Hospital, London.

according to an NHS report last year, around half of the 60,000 cardiac arrest cases — 28,000 — received resuscitation attempts from emergency services. the other half were deemed beyond help by the time medics arrived.

in some cases, this may have been because a person had been dead for several hours, but in a significant number of others the patient was beyond help because no passers-by had used CPR.

and of the 28,000 cases where resuscitation was attempted by emergency services, only 8 per cent survived.

this is significantly lower than in other countries (for instance in norway it is 25 per cent) and experts say this is because not enough patients are given CPR when t hey first collapse with a cardiac arrest.

according to the NHS r eport, co - authored by the British Heart Foundation and the resuscitation Council (uk), ‘immediate CPR given by bystanders could increase the number of people who receive CPR by the emergency medical services’. this ultimately would increase the number of people who survive.

key to increasing the number of people who know CPR is teaching children at school, says Dr andrew Lockey, a&E consultant and honorary secretary of the resuscitation Council. ‘our survival rates are abysmal, and embarrassing compared to other countries. in norway, they have included first aid and CPR in the curriculum since the Sixties, and germany have recently included it in theirs.’

He says it would take just half an hour a year to teach in schools. although first aid is included on the British school curriculum, it is not mandatory. ‘the mandatory inclusion of CPR training and defibrillator awareness on the school curriculum would save thousands of lives a year,’ adds Dr Lockey. ‘the current system of leaving it to local choice is j ust not good enough. this is too important to leave to chance.’ this view is echoed by Professor rosenthal: ‘unfortunately we sometimes see children and young adults who are brain damaged because resuscitation wasn’t started soon enough. and, of course, many people — children and adults — who suffer a cardiac arrest don’t survive.

‘But if you started teaching CPR in schools now, you’d have generations of young adults who would know what to do if a person collapsed in front of them — and not panic.’

Mark understands this panic. When Matt stopped breathing, he had no idea how to save him.

‘Luckily, the paramedics were with us within four minutes. But if circumstances had been different — and we had been left on our own for any longer, or if the ambulance had been delayed, then Matt might not be here now.’

the paramedics spent 13 minutes trying to resuscitate Matt on the upstairs landing — and had to use a defibrillator six times.

‘on the fifth attempt of shocking him i looked over at my wife, karen, and our twin daughters, amy and Sophie, who were ten at the time. We were all crying and shaking, and i asked the paramedic if he had a pulse, to which he shook his head,’ says Mark.

‘ in panic and desperation i shouted: “Come on, Matthew,” and after the next shock, the sixth, they found a pulse.

‘He started making a groaning sound, and we knew he was breathing again.

the paramedics rushed Matt to t he Conquest Hospital in Hastings. Later that night he was transferred to the specialist Evelina Children’s Hospital.

Matt astounded medics by making a rapid and full recovery. But despite a barrage of medical and genetic tests they could not find the cause of the cardiac arrest.

the teenager had no previous illness, apart from mild asthma. the rest of the family were tested for genes that are known to increase the risk of heart abnormalities but none was found.

Matt was classed as having a primary ventricular fibrillation, which is where the heart — for some unknown reason — goes into an abnormal rhythm that triggers cardiac arrest. as many as one in five cardiac arrest survivors receives this diagnosis.

as a precaution, he’s been fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, a small device inserted under the collarbone that delivers a shock to the heart — via long electrodes — if it ever again falls into an irregular rhythm.

today Matt, now 19, is still a keen footballer and plays for Bath university, where he is studying for a sports performance degree.

He remembers nothing of his cardiac arrest six years ago, though the memory still looms large for his parents.

‘a f ew months after Matt’s cardiac arrest, we had a chance meeting at a party with one of the paramedics who’d revived him.

‘She was amazed at his recovery. they gave him six defibrillator shocks and his heart had stopped for 17 minutes. She told us that normally after seven shocks they consider whether to continue.

‘With neither of us knowing CPR, any delay would have cost us precious seconds, and Matt may not have been here today — or may have had serious brain damage.’

JOE MULLIGAN from the British red Cross believes first aid training is especially crucial for parents. ‘Many parents don’t want to contemplate their children being in life-threatening situations,’ he says.

‘But the reality is that, as a parent, you may well be the first person on the scene if your child has an accident — and all the evidence suggests that the first person on the scene makes the difference to a person’s survival.’

Mark, karen and their three children all now know how to do CPR. ‘ the chances are most people will never have to use it,’ says Mark. ‘But if you do need it, you could make the difference between life and death.’

TO FIND out about first aid classes, go to redcross.org.uk. Mark’s novel, The Fear, which was inspired by his son’s recovery, is published by triopublishing.co.uk