Public ‘too shy’ to offer first aid to heart attack victims

EMBARRASSMENT over mouth-tomouth resuscitation means six out of 10 Britons would stand by rather than provide first aid if they saw someone having a heart attack, experts said.

Concerns over being sued and a lack of confidence in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) skills are also holding people back from offering emergency help to cardiac patients.

A report by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) found that just 8 per cent of patients in England survive a cardiac arrest and that only 30 to 40 per cent of bystanders intervene when they see someone collapse. The charity wants to raise awareness that survival can be increased by up to 40 per cent with the correct intervention.

Every minute without CPR or resuscitation using a defibrillator cuts a person’s survival rate by about 10 per cent, and after 10 minutes without CPR or defibrillation, a person has at best a 2 per cent chance.

Previous research by the Govern- ment indicates that hundreds of lives could be saved each year if more people were willing to give CPR. But Sir Nilesh Samani, medical director at the BHF, said: “There is definitely a certain amount of embarrassment about stepping in, as well as a lack of confidence.

“We need to make people aware that if they are not comfortable providing mouth-to-mouth then it is the compressions [on the chest] which is the most important thing.”

Sir Nilesh also called for across-theboard training in secondary schools. “It is clear that we need a revolution in CPR by educating more people in simple life-saving skills and the use of external defibrillators,” he said.