Ordinary people can save lives.

Seriously, folks. Ordinary people can keep a cardiac arrest victim's heart and brain alive long enough for a defibrillator to re-start the heart. It doesn't happen all the time, but why is it that 27 % of cardiac arrest survivors had their arrest in an airport? It's because there are lots of AED's and lots of trained people in airports. Why is it that 66 % of all cardiac arrests occur in the home, yet only 15% of the survivors had their arrest in the home? There aren't very many AED's in the home.

The only complaint I have with what happened in the save below is that there is no valid reason I can imagine why there shouldn't be an AED on the sidelines at any athletic competition or practice. You shouldn't have to run into the school to get the AED.

Here's the story.

BY PATTY HENETZ
The Salt Lake Tribune

First published Sep 02 2011 03:20PM
Updated Sep 3, 2011 07:39AM

If not for his coaches’ quick action, 17-year-old Ross Palmer would be dead.

The American Falls, Idaho, football player collapsed Tuesday evening while running wind sprints. Two of his coaches started cardiopulmonary resuscitation while another ran into the high school to grab the school’s new AED, a portable heart defibrillator.

Emergency technicians on their way told the coaches to hold off on shocking Ross’ heart, but they went ahead. And that, says Intermountain Medical Center cardiac surgeon Brian Crandall, was what kept Ross from becoming a statistic.

"Sudden death in athletes is quite common in the United States," Crandall said Friday. An estimated 1,000 die each year of unknown heart defects. "If [Ross] had not been shocked," Crandall said, "no way would he have come out of that."

On Friday, a team led by cardiac surgeon Peter Weiss placed a pager-size stimulator device in Ross’ chest, just below his left collarbone, then threaded a sensor wire through his arm’s subclavian vein into his heart.

The device won’t fix the young athlete’s heart, but it will protect him. From now on, if Ross’ heart goes into ventricle fibrillation arrest — quivering instead of beating — the implantable cardiac defibrillator, or ICD, will shock his heart back into action.

"Every doctor, every EMT I talked to said, ‘Your son should be dead,’ " said Travis Palmer, Ross’ father, who with other family members waited at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray during the 11/2-hour implant procedure.

"I’m glad he’s here," said Diana Palmer, Ross’ mother