Author Archive
cprusweb
Five Seconds From Death: Boy, 8, saves child using first aid learnt at school
Five seconds from death: Boy, 8, saves child using first aid learnt at school Chloe Booker Published: October 11, 2015 – 7:25PM An eight-year-old Altona North boy is being praised after using first aid training learnt at school to save a four-year-old boy from drowning. Judd Greenham was playing in a Port Douglas resort pool while on a family holiday when he saw Matthew Sagar slip on a step, hit his head and fall unconscious to the bottom of the pool. Although there were five adults watching over the shallow pool about noon on September 30, it happened so quickly that Judd was the only person to see the incident. “The little boy slipped over on a step and hit his head and then I scooped him up,” Judd said. “His eyes were rolling back.” St John Ambulance had visited Judd’s grade 2 class at Sacred Heart Primary School in Newport as part of its first aid in schools program in May. Judd said his pool safety training kicked in and he began to practice what he’d been taught. “I pulled his head up from the water,” he said. “I [put] my hand under his nose to see if he was breathing and he wasn’t breathing.” Judd then called his mother, Natasha, who phoned an ambulance as Matthew’s father jumped in the pool. Paramedics arrived and Matthew slowly regained consciousness as Judd stood over him repeating questions he learnt at school, such as “how many fingers am I holding up”? The first aid program’s manager, Martin Wells, said the training had given Judd the confidence to act quickly to save Matthew’s life. “He was five seconds away from being dead,” he said. “It’s another testament to the proof that first aid training saves lives and you’re never too young or too old to learn what to do when in an emergency.” Mr Wells said once water entered a child’s lungs, there was a 90 per cent chance of death at the poolside. If paramedics were able to revive the child, there was still only a 2 per cent survival rate in hospital. “We’re talking about a couple of seconds between life and death,” he said. Mr Wells said it showed how important it was for all members of the public to learn first aid.More People Are Stepping Up To Perform CPR, And It’s Saving Lives
By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) – More people are stepping up to the plate when they see others suffer cardiac arrest, according to two new studies. And the increase in the number of bystanders providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) has been tied to better outcomes of the usually fatal condition, researchers report in JAMA. “In terms of outcomes we saw survival with good brain function increase by 37 percent, which is a very remarkable result,” said Dr. Carolina Malta Hansen of the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina. Hansen, the lead author of one of the studies, said a person in cardiac arrest is practically dead. “Your heart is not beating to allow circulation,” she said. Each year in the U.S., there are about 400,000 cardiac arrests outside of hospitals that aren’t related to injuries, according to the American Heart Association. The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation says about nine out of 10 people with this kind of cardiac arrest will die. People in cardiac arrest need CPR to keep blood flowing throughout the body, according to the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation. Then they need to be shocked into a proper rhythm with a defibrillator. Without treatment, a person dies within minutes.‘Dead’ man’s recovery shows why prolonged CPR works
“AUG 22 2013, 6:56 PM ET ‘Dead’ man’s recovery shows why prolonged CPR works by BARBARA MANTEL An Ohio man’s recovery several minutes after doctors declared him dead shows how murky the decision can be about when to stop resuscitation efforts. While Anthony Yahle, 37, may not have been dead for 45 minutes, as was widely reported, his remarkable bounce back without suffering brain damage or other ill effects stunned doctors at Kettering Medical Center in Kettering, Ohio. Yahle, a diesel mechanic from West Carrollton, Ohio, “coded” — a term meaning emergency — on the afternoon of Aug. 5, after arriving in the hospital that morning in cardiac arrest. A team of doctors rushed to his hospital bedside and used chest compressions, a bag connected to a breathing tube and medications to force blood and oxygen through his body. After 45 minutes, they gave up and declared him dead. “He was truly flatlined at the end of that code. He had no electrical motion, no respiration, and no heart beat, and no blood pressure,” says Jayne Testa, director of cardiovascular services at Kettering. But five to seven minutes later, the team noticed a trace of electrical activity on his heart monitor and resumed their efforts to resuscitate him. Yahle is now home recovering, according to Testa.”Cardiac arrest treatment is a community issue…
“Cardiac arrest treatment is a community issue, requiring a wide range of people to be prepared to act, including bystanders, family members, first responders, emergency medical personnel, and health care providers…Following a cardiac arrest, each minute without treatment decreases the likelihood of surviving without disability” ”Although evidence indicates that bystander CPR and AED use can significantly improve survival and outcomes from cardiac arrest, each year less than 3 percent of the U.S. population receives CPR training, leaving many bystanders unprepared to respond to cardiac arrest.”- 1
- 2