The Shocking Truth – AED Institute Newsletter (September 2011)
AED Institute Newsletter (September 2011)
View the Full Version of The Shocking Truth
Newsletter Contents:
- A Life Saved on the Holiest Day of the Year
- New Research from France
- AED Failures Linked to Cardiac Arrest Deaths
- Manufacturer’s Guidelines for Inspecting AEDs
A Life Saved on the Holiest Day of the Year
Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday of atonement, is one of the holiest days of the year in the Jewish calendar.
Each year Jews all over the world gather in synagogues to pray for forgiveness in hopes of being given a fresh start in the year to come. In 2009, the meaning of Yom Kippur took on an entirely new dimension for one Los Angeles congregation.
The morning prayer service was well underway when a member of a Los Angeles synagogue complained to another congregant that he was not feeling well. The fellow congregant-who happened to be a volunteer EMT with Hatzolah of Los Angeles-immediately requested backup and began assessing his patient. Additional Hatzolah members arrived with an AED within seconds-just in time to witness the man go into cardiac arrest.
In view of a worried crowd of worshipers, the Hatzolah members immediately began CPR and applied the AED. A shock was administered which successfully restored the patient’s heartbeat. Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics arrived on scene and transported the patient to a local hospital where he was treated and released without any lasting complications.
The quick response by the all-volunteer Hatzolah of Los Angeles-whose average response time is about 90 seconds-underscores how critically important immediate CPR administration and rapid AED availability are when it comes to helping save lives.
April of this year we celebrated with a reunion between the survivor and Hatzolah rescuers at our annual banquet. It was a wonderful and emotional day. Thank you to all those that took part in this awesome story! I hope to one day have more stories of successful CPR and AED usage to share!
Scott S. Topiol, LA-16
Director of Training, AED Program Coordinator
Hatzolah of Los Angeles
Email: scott.topiol@hatzolahofla.org
Phone: (323) 617-4608 | Direct Fax: (323) 903-0321
(Reuters Health) – New research from France suggests that young, competitive athletes account for only a fraction of sports-related cardiac arrests, in which the heart stops beating without warning.
Reuters Heatlh Article Aug 24, 2011
Rather, most cardiac arrests may happen in adult men playing recreational sports, the study found.
The findings come in the wake of several sudden deaths on the playing field, such as Michigan high school basketball player Wes Leonard, who collapsed earlier this year when his heart stopped just moments after he’d sunk a game-winning basket.
In the new study, researchers documented 820 cases of sports-related cardiac arrest over five years. That works out to only four or five deaths for every million people each year, although the true rate may be higher than that, they say.
“We cannot transmit the message that sport practice is dangerous for health,” study author Dr. Eloi Marijon, from the Paris Cardiovascular Research Center, told Reuters Health in an email. Rather, the findings point to the importance of doing quick CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, when someone suffers a cardiac arrest, the French team says.
The new data came from a combination of ambulance reports of sudden cardiac arrest in exercisers and media releases on those emergencies.
From 2005 to 2010, the researchers tracked all sport-related cardiac arrests in adolescents and adults living in 60 of 96 districts in France. Out of 820 total cardiac arrests, 50 occurred in younger competitive athletes age 10 to 35. On average, they still suffered cardiac arrests at a higher rate than the population in general — about 10 in every million, per year.
“That was one of the take-home findings — that they probably are more likely to die from cardiac death,” said Dr. Kim Harmon, a sports medicine doctor at the University of Washington in Seattle, who reviewed the findings for Reuters Health.
Still, more than 90 percent of all cardiac arrests happened during recreational sports, most often biking or running, the researchers reported in the journal Circulation. The majority were in otherwise healthy men between age 35 and 65.
Less than a third of people in cardiac arrest were given CPR — but when they were, their odds of surviving the arrest more than tripled. For the whole story or a copy of the article Click here
AED Failures Linked to Cardiac Arrest Deaths
Dead batteries, bad connections, and other malfunctions of automated external defibrillators have been linked to more than 1,000 cardiac arrest deaths over the last 15 years, a study has found.
The study – Analysis of Automated External Defibrillator Device Failures Reported to the Food and Drug Administration -blamed dead batteries for nearly one quarter of the AED failures.
“Survival from cardiac arrest depends on the reliable operation of AEDs,” lead study author Lawrence DeLuca, MD, said in the study, which was published online in Annals of Emergency Medicine. “AEDs can truly be lifesavers but only if they are in good working order and people are willing to use them.”
DeLuca’s team analyzed reports to the FDA about all adverse events connected to AEDs between January 1993 and October 2008. Of the 40,787 AED-related events reported to the FDA, 1,150 of the events were linked to fatalities. Forty-five percent of the failures occurred during the attempt to charge and deliver a shock to the person in cardiac arrest.
Problems with pads and connectors accounted for 24% of the failures and battery power problems accounted for 23% of the failures.
Odds of surviving cardiac arrest decline by 7% to 10% per minute of delay in defibrillation. AEDs have become common in public places such as airports and offices, but bystanders are reluctant to use them. An Annals of Emergency Medicine study published earlier this year found that less than half of people in public places reported being willing to use an AED and more than half were unable to recognize one.
PLEASE INSPECT AND MAINTAIN YOUR AEDS!!!
MANUFACTURER’S GUIDELINES FOR INSPECTING AEDS
- Cardiac Science-Daily, monthly, and annual inspections must be performed
- Medtronic CR Plus-“on a regular basis”, manual recommends monthly as the best routine
- Philips FRx and Onsite-Periodically and after any use
- Welch Allyn AED-10-depends on frequency of use- If used monthly then inspect weekly, if used infrequently then inspect monthly
- Zoll-Inspect frequently and as needed
Now go and inspect your AED!
- AED is in its case and battery installed
- System status indicator shows AED is ready for use
- 2 sets of pads within expiration date
- Accessories: Including gloves, razor, scissors, face mask
- Pediatric pads or pediatric energy reducing key
- spare battery within install date, if applicable
If you have made it this far in the newsletter, you now know how to save a life, now share it with others.
STAYING ALIVE
Push Hard and Fast: That’s the rule to remember when compressing the chest during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). How hard? The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends pressing to a depth of at least two inches for adults and children, or 1½ inches for infants.
How fast? At least 100 times per minute-which just happens to be the beat of the 1977 disco tune by the Bee Gees, “Stayin’ Alive.”
Using “Stayin’ Alive” as a CPR coach is the brainchild of Alson Inaba, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at the John Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu. As a member of the AHA’s Program Administrative Committee in 2005,
Inaba was one of the experts who reviewed the guidelines for administering CPR for pediatric cardiac arrest before their release to the public. The guidelines emphasized that the optimal rate for chest compressions was 100 times per minute or more. “I realized we needed a way of teaching people how to compress at that rate,” he says.
About a year earlier, Inaba recalls, he had been teaching CPR to medical residents in Honolulu. “We’d do a little skit in which someone would collapse on stage and the residents would use an automated external defibrillator (AED) to save the person’s life. One of them happened to bring a boom box on stage, and I told him to use the song ‘Stayin Alive’ because the title seemed fitting.” That skit came back to Inaba as he pondered the most effective way to demonstrate the best rhythm for CPR, so he put on a CD of “Stayin’ Alive” and simply counted the beats. “I realized that it had a beat of almost exactly 100 times a minute, and I decided that would be how I would teach CPR to my students: I’d play the song and have them do the compressions to that.”
Word of Inaba’s unique teaching tool spread. It was featured in the Fall 2006 issue of the AHA publication Currents in Emergency Cardiovascular Care and appeared on the AHA website. The tip went viral faster than you can say John Travolta.
”Within a few months I was getting e-mails from people who were using it to save lives in Canada, Egypt, and Australia. I even got a video clip from Botswana, Africa, of the chief executive officer of one of the hospitals there performing compressions on a mannequin with ‘Stayin’ Alive’ blaring in the background.”
Way to go!!! Dr. Inaba is my hero!
Spread the word… “Staying Alive” Saves Lives
Posted on September 14, 2011, in AED Institute News 2011, AED News & Information, The Shocking Truth - AED Institute Newsletter and tagged aed inspection check list, AED Institute, AED Institute news, American Heart Association, automated external defibrillators, cpr information, cpr news, First Aid & CPR classes in Hawaii, Pamela Foster. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
I always use the “Stayin Alive” rhythm with teaching CPR, but one of my students recently told me the same rhythm is also found in the song “Another one bites the dust.”
That is not quite as much fun, unless you are really a fan of “dark humor” and I guess it really qualifies as that. In any case, the songs really do make the class more fun, and as students push had and fast, I sometimes sing along with the “oo, oo, oo” part!!