Odds of Surviving Cardiac Arrest Unchanged
by KFYR TV Anne Kelly
Posted on 12/8/2009
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The American Heart Association estimates a person has just a five percent chance of surviving if they go into cardiac arrest outside of the hospital. Those are odds that researchers say have gone largely unchanged in more than 30 years.
From scans to stents, doctors have developed a lot of methods over the years to give heart disease patients longer, healthier lives. But St. Alexius emergency room physician Kevin Mickelson says those interventions don’t do much for a person when they go into cardiac arrest outside of the hospital.
“When we look at cardiac arrest that means their heart goes into ventricular fibrillation or their heart stops. The technology is still CPR, it’s still defibrillator, and it’s still down time as the predictor, and you’ve got an eight minute window,” says Mickelson.
Janel Schmitz of the West Dakota Chapter of the American Red Cross says the rate of people CPR trained hasn’t changed significantly, which is likely part of the reason the odds of surviving arrest haven’t changed much either. “I think what happens is there are fewer people who have actually taken CPR classes than people realize,” says Schmitz, “There was once an initial push when it came out but I don’t know that people talk about it as much anymore.”
Even though CPR training rates aren’t increasing cardiac arrest survival odds, one might think the number of Automated External Defibrillators scattered throughout public places would. Today you can find defibrillators in a lot of public places. Problem is, says Schmitz, most people aren’t trained on how to use them, and even if they are, many people aren’t comfortable doing so. “I was just in a business the other day and they’d purchased a defibrillator but their staff has not been trained on how to use it,” says Schmitz.
Getting trained is simple, as is learning CPR. The Red Cross holds classes year round.