We could really use your help - Please!

Please visit http://www.slicc.org/Pepsi

SLICC has applied for a $250,000 grant to deploy 75 AED's and equip/support 25 additional neighborhood CPR training centers in Chatham County, GA.

We need your non-financial support to win this grant.

Please vote online and by texting every day. This will save lives.

Thank you,

Bob

Church Saves Great-Great-Grandmother during Service

Posted by cocreator on September 20, 2010

The last thing Sallie Sims remembers about going to a funeral last week at CrossPoint Church of Christ was wondering if she would know the fourth verse to the hymn “No Setting Sun.”

“I finished the song and then, the next thing, I was in an ambulance, and a man was trying to put oxygen on me,” Sims said. “I told him I didn’t like having anything on my face.”

Sims is living proof that having an automated external defibrillator, or AED, on site can make a difference in whether a person lives after the onset of sudden cardiac death.

CrossPoint bought its defibrillator in 2006 at the urging of a church elder. Staff members rushed to get the device when Sims collapsed.

Sallie Sims the Survivor

“We had just finished the music for the funeral, and the first speaker had gotten up when (Sims) fell over, out of her seat,” said CrossPoint preacher Frank Mills. “Someone yelled, ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ and luckily we had several there at that time, and they rushed to her.”

Bob Man, a local physician, said Sims didn’t have a pulse and was turning blue.

“We were giving CPR, by compressions and mouth-to-mouth, and she was shocked (with the defibrillator),” he said. “She didn’t start back right after she was shocked, and the machine was getting ready to shock her a second time when she started breathing on her own again.”

“Based on what I’ve been told, I’m convinced if not for the church having that (AED) she would not be with us today,” said Sims’ niece, Stacy White. “She was gone; there was no heart beat, but thanks to the defibrillator, she’s alive.”

White said her aunt doesn’t have a history of heart problems and didn’t have any symptoms, nor did she feel bad the day of the funeral. But the 71-year-old great-great-grandmother had to have five stents placed in the arteries in her heart.

“When I saw her in the emergency room, I told her she didn’t look like she had just had a heart attack,” White said. “She looked good, just like always.”

Mann said Sims suffered a sudden cardiac death because of a rhythm problem.

Bruce Carson, director of Keller and Lauderdale EMS, said the situation with Sims is a perfect example of how AEDs are intended to be utilized.

“This is the outcome that all emergency professionals want to see,” Carson said. “There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that early defibrillation and CPR saved this woman’s life. The swift action by the people there, and the early shock, was the absolute key to her survival.”

He said all volunteer fire departments and first responders have AEDs.

Mann said two years ago a similar situation occurred at Walmart in Florence.

“A woman was there, and she had a heart attack,” Mann said. “The store had an AED, and the manager used it to bring her back. I would encourage any public place to have them.”

Mark Killen, recreation outreach minister at CrossPoint, said church staff have gone through basic CPR training and have been trained on how to use the defibrillator.

“We’re considering buying a portable oxygen tank just to have in case of emergencies, and we plan on having refresher courses for the staff and any members who want to attend,” Killen said.

He said the situation with Sims was the first time the church used the AED.

“Our hope is that it hangs on the wall and we never have to use it again,” Killen said.

“There is a need for these in all churches and all public places,” said Jerry Dowd, who was sitting next to Sims when she collapsed. “Until you see it work, you may be skeptical, but I saw the results. Even if you only have to use it once, it pays dividends like in this case.”

Sims said Mann came to see her in the intensive care unit after her surgery to place the stents in her arteries.

“He said he would not call me lucky, but that I had a blessed day,” she said. “Without that machine, I wouldn’t have made it. The machine was my salvation.

“I’ve been told I was a medical miracle,” she said. “I must be.”

Sims’ friend, Julia Dowd, said while the doctors and other emergency medical officials worked on Sims at the church, people in the church prayed.

“It was a like a Hallmark story with a happy ending,” she said.

Read more: http://www.firstaidcorps.org/#ixzz104V2iUzV

Please visit http://www.slicc.org/Pepsi

SLICC has applied for a $250,000 grant to deploy 75 AED's and equip/support 25 additional neighborhood CPR training centers in Chatham County, GA.

We need your non-financial support to win this grant.

Please vote online and by texting every day. This will save lives.

Thank you,

Bob

And considering that compression-only CPR news travels primarily by internet...

...it is shocking to see the results of the Digital Future Project survey:

______________

"And here's a somewhat surprising study finding: the number of 36- to 55-year-old participants who claimed they are not Internet users in this Web-inundated era — as many as 19 percent of 46- to 55-year-olds and 15 percent of 36- to 45-year-olds.

"The study is part of the Annenberg School's continuing Digital Future Project, which has been surveying Americans on Internet-related views and behavior for 10 years.

"Read the report highlights or purchase it here.

http://www.digitalcenter.org/pages/current_report.asp?intGlobalId=19 ".

_______________

Wham-O. we're down to 80-85% communications efficiency.

Rehearsal, Rehearsal, Rehersal

Aurora medics perfecting the back-to-life cycle

By SARA CASTELLANOS

The Aurora Sentinel

Published: Thursday, September 16, 2010 8:00 AM MDT

Ale Kerekes, RN and clinical educator, performs chest compressions on a dummy, Nathan Daly operates a bag valve mask and Gilbert Pineda, MD, and EMS medical director, oversees the Resuscitaion Choreogaphy drill Sept. 9 at The Medical Center of Aurora. (Gabriel Christus/The Aurora Sentinel)

The protagonist is a person whose heart has stopped beating.

The secondary characters are firefighters, physicians and nurses.

The Aurora Fire Department’s Resuscitation Choreography program is like a play. It’s scripted and choreographed, with each movement calculated and meticulous.

The secondary characters work to circulate blood from the heart to the brain by rhythmically pumping on the chest of the cardiac arrest patient, mindful to miss as few beats as possible.

If it’s done right, the patient is brought back to life at the denouement.

Resuscitation Choreography was put into practice in January 2009. It’s the only resuscitation technique in the metro area that focuses on significantly limiting the pauses between chest compressions for patients undergoing cardiac arrest.

If the pauses are reduced between chest compressions, the cardiac arrest patient has a greater chance of surviving without brain damage, according to the American Heart Association.

“Everybody is responsible for their own task, but their task is done to support quality compressions,” said Kevin Waters, manager of the Aurora Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Services Bureau. “We concentrate on how we can do all the other things that are really important to managing a cardiac arrest, without interrupting CPR.”

Emphasis is placed on timing the compressions and continuing them throughout the entire time spent with the patient, with pauses of only a few seconds in between two-minute-long compression cycles. [Blogger comment: note that this is not 30:2 timing. It's 200:2]

Because of Resuscitation Choreography, 90 percent of the time spent with a cardiac arrest patient is now dedicated to chest compressions.

That’s up from 30 percent of the time that was dedicated to chest compressions prior to 2009.

“Historically, we’d respond to a cardiac arrest and we’d know there’s a very low likelihood that we are going to be able to resuscitate these people,” Waters said. “Now, we respond to a cardiac arrest and we know that it’s very likely that we are going to be resuscitating them.”

Last year, with the help of doctors and nurses at the Medical Center of Aurora, the Aurora Fire Department successfully revived 24 patients who were able to walk out of the hospital without brain damage — more people than they were able to resuscitate in the previous three years combined, Waters said.

The program is now a finalist for the 2010 Municipal Excellence award, sponsored by the National League of Cities and given annually in November.

Arthur Ceccato, 46, says he owes his life to the “complete strangers” that performed the resuscitation technique on him after he suffered a cardiac arrest while driving home from his son’s baseball game in February.

“Hopefully nobody ever has to experience that to understand what it is they do, and how it comes together,” said Parker-resident Ceccato. “But they do make a difference. They really do. It’s touching — it’s overwhelming.”

It was the difference between an endless sleep, and watching his 7-year-old daughter’s dance performances and coaching his 13-year-old son’s baseball team.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, Ceccato remembers, when his family was driving home one afternoon in late February.

At a stoplight at the intersection of South Parker Road and East Quincy Avenue, Ceccato looked over at his son, who was sitting in the passenger seat. He playfully tipped his son’s baseball hat.

When the light turned green, he stepped on the gas.

“Then it was just like taking a nap,” Ceccato said. “That’s the last thing I remember.”

He was driving about 30 miles per hour when his heart stopped. The car drifted off the side of the road and smashed through a fence.

His son rotated the steering wheel to avoid hitting a tree, and the car landed in a ditch, wrecked.

A man driving the opposite way was watching Ceccato’s car drift off the road.

He made a U-turn to try and help the family, although he was on his way to the funeral of a friend who had died from heart failure, Ceccato said.

The man performed chest compressions for a few minutes until an ambulance arrived at the scene.

Ceccato awoke from an induced coma at the south campus of the Medical Center of Aurora about three days later.

“I didn’t know what happened,” he said. “It was like trying to recall a dream.”

There is no doubt in Ceccato’s mind that the bystander, CPR and Resuscitation Choreography saved his life.

The memory of the traumatic experience lingers in the minds of his family, though.

“Once I did start driving again, my daughter, for the longest time, would ask, ‘you’re not going to fall asleep again, are you?’ … It helps keep things in perspective,” Ceccato said. “Things could always be worse. Every day is a gift.”

Aurora’s medical professionals consider Ceccato’s case to be a prime example of the importance of reacting quickly and efficiently when trying to revive a cardiac arrest victim.

If several minutes pass without chest compressions, the chances of reviving a patient are slim.

“Your heart is not pumping any blood, there’s no blood circulating to the brain, so the brain is going to die,” said Gilbert Pineda, a doctor at the Medical Center of Aurora and the medical director of Emergency Medical Services.

To put it more candidly, a person who has suffered a cardiac arrest is virtually dead when the Resuscitation Choreography process begins, Waters said.

“This thing we are doing here, without being too blunt, we do this on people that are dead,” he said. “They don’t have a pulse, they’re not breathing, they’re dead. That’s why what we’re doing here is so amazing.”

Educating people about the significance of bystander CPR is one of the most helpful ways to save more lives, Waters said.

“If the bystanders have started CPR before any of us get here, it dramatically increases the likelihood that we’re going to be able to resuscitate them,” Waters said.

Aurora’s Resuscitation Choreography program was adopted after research by the American Heart Association in 2005 showed that cardiac arrest victims have a better chance of surviving when doctors and bystanders spend more time doing chest compressions.

It’s a simple concept, but one that can mean the difference between life and death.

“When we do chest compressions, it helps the patient,” Pineda said. “Every time you stop, you take about five steps backward.”

There are striking differences between the choreography method and the way the city’s firefighters and paramedics used to manage cardiac arrest victims.

A team of medical professionals and fire department officials simulated the two versions for The Aurora Sentinel on Sept. 9 at the south campus of the Medical Center of Aurora.

There was no synthesized approach before 2009.

Paramedics didn’t keep track of how long they were doing chest compressions from the time they arrived at the scene to the time they arrived at the hospital. The hospital room was buzzing with chatter. The doctor was barking orders at people, while everyone was talking over one another. Chest compressions were infrequent, especially before and after the dummy was “shocked” with the defibrillator.

“When you’re in this adrenaline-pumped environment, you don’t realize how quickly a minute can go by,” said Mark Mayes, interim director of Emergency Services for the Medical Center of Aurora. “We would be off the chest for a minute, doing many other things that were necessary to be done. Nobody wanted to be a minute off the chest, but we just didn’t realize it.”

The clock starts as soon as the paramedics arrive on the scene, with the new method.

Chest compressions are done at two-minute intervals, because that’s how long it takes for blood to circulate to the brain, Pineda said.

During the ambulance ride, a hockey puck-shaped device is placed on the dummy’s chest, which is attached to a machine that tells paramedics whether they are doing the chest compressions effectively.

Paramedics take turns with chest compressions. When the dummy is in the emergency room, the elements of quiet and calmness are the starkest changes from the old version.

Everyone has a specific assignment, and the doctor oversees the process with very little discourse.

The machine is left with the hospital until they no longer need it.

The final step in the sequence of choreographed moves is the heart that starts to beat on its own.

“This is what we work for, what we live for, what we train for,” Pineda said. “It’s the ultimate save.”

Drop the inferiority complex - you can do it

Advanced Rescuer- versus Citizen-Witnessed Cardiac Arrest: Is There a Difference in Outcome?

[Note: for those with busy schedules, the short answer is 'No']

Posted online on September 13, 2010. (doi:10.3109/10903127.2010.514089)

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Amy H. Kaji, MD, PhD, Arslan M. Hanif, MD, James T. Niemann, MD

From the Department of Emergency Medicine, Harbor–UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, California (JTN, AHK, AMH); the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor–UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, California (JTN, AHK); and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California (JTN, AHK). Revision received June 7, 2010; accepted for publication June 11, 2010.

Presented in part at the 2010 National Association of EMS Physicians annual meeting, Phoenix, Arizona, January 2010.

None of the authors have any conflicts of interests with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence this work. There were no study sponsors.

Address correspondence and reprint requests to: James T. Niemann, MD, Department of Emergency Medicine, Harbor–UCLA Medical Center, 1000 West Carson Street, Box 21, Torrance, CA 90509. e-mail: jniemann@emedharbor.edu

Abstract

Background. Substantial financial and human resources are invested in training and maintaining advanced life support (ALS) skills of paramedics who are deployed to the field in response to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. It would be expected that patients who experience cardiac arrest in the presence of a trained health care practitioner, such as a paramedic, have better outcomes.Objective. To compare the rates of return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC), survival to hospital admission (SHA), and survival to hospital discharge (SHD) between paramedic-witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest vs. citizen-witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Methods. In this retrospective cohort study, the records of all out-of-hospital nontraumatic cardiac arrest patients presenting to a municipal teaching hospital from November 1, 1994, through June 30, 2008, were reviewed. The age, gender, race, rhythm on paramedic arrival, presence of bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), whether it was a witnessed arrest and, if witnessed, whether it was a paramedic-witnessed arrest, site of the arrest, and the rate of SHD were noted. A univariate odds ratio was computed to describe the association between paramedic-witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest vs.citizen-witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and SHD. A multivariable logistic regression analysis was also performed, controlling for age, gender, arrest rhythm, bystander CPR, and site of arrest. Results. Of the total cohort of 1,294 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, 750 (52.6%) were either paramedic-witnessed (154/750 = 20.5%) or citizen-witnessed (596/750 = 79.5%). Among the witnessed cardiac arrests, overall the SHD was 53 of 750 (7.1%). On univariate analysis, the ROSC, SHA, or SHD rates were not statistically significantly different between paramedic- and citizen-witnessed arrests. Even after multivariable adjustment, the ROSC, SHA, and SHD rates were not significantly different between paramedic- and citizen-witnessed arrests. Conclusions. Among our study population of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims, paramedic-witnessed arrests did not appear to have improved survival rates when compared with citizen-witnessed arrests. Key words:cardiac arrest; cardiopulmonary resuscitation; advanced life support; basic life support

Once in a while, CPR is enough...but don't count on it!

Central Catholic's Hayward Demison 'just happy to be alive' -- 9/12 1:51 a.m.

Hayward Demison had just made the biggest play of his life, running 45 yards for the go-ahead touchdown for Central Catholic's football team Friday night.

Moments later, though, Demison lay unconscious on the sideline, no longer breathing, his heart stopped, as medical personnel worked to save his life.

“It was the scariest thing I've ever been a part of,” Central Catholic football coach Steve Pyne said.

Demison, a 6-foot-1, 195-pound high school junior, was diagnosed with athletic asthma two years ago. So after his touchdown run, when his heart raced and he struggled to catch his breath, he sent for his inhaler. After using it, though, his heart only accelerated. Nauseated and dizzy, he lost his balance and leaned on assistant coach Woody Green.

“He was gasping for air like it was his last breath,” Green said.

He was having a heart attack.

“I just fell on the ground,” Demison said. “I don't remember anything else except waking up a few minutes later, and people are standing over me, and I'm in shock. I'm trying to get up, and everybody's saying, 'Stay there. Calm down.' I looked to my left and saw everybody, and they were crying.”

Demison's heart had stopped for about two minutes. But thanks to the quick action of cardiac nurse Lisa Lyver, who came down from the stands at West Linn High School and performed CPR, he was resting comfortably at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center on Saturday.

“I’m just happy to be alive,” Demison said. “The person that gave me CPR saved my life. I'm very thankful. I'm truly blessed. It was a close call.”

Tests have revealed that Demison's left coronary artery wasn't supplying his heart with enough blood during exertion, according to his father, Hayward Demison II. Although the younger Demison didn't sustain heart damage from the heart attack, he will have surgery in about two weeks for the existing condition and should be able to make a full recovery within six months, allowing him to return to the football field in his senior year.

“Hopefully I'll be back, after everything is taken care of,” he said.

Tragedy was narrowly averted.

Lyver said that by the time paramedics would have arrived at West Linn High School -- where Central Catholic beat Canby 28-24 on Friday night thanks to Demison's fourth-quarter score -- it probably would have been too late to save Demison. And Lyver said that Demison was fortunate that the 60 or so chest compressions she performed were enough to restore his pulse.

“In training, they tell you that you need a defibrillator for people to come back, because they just don't come back with CPR,” Lyver said. “So he is absolutely one of the luckiest ones.”

Demison had dizzy spells and shortness of breath two years ago as a freshman at Gresham High School. He went to the doctor and was told he had athletic asthma. He got a much different diagnosis this weekend.

“The doctor explained that this is a defect he's had for years,” his father said. “He's like one out of 100,000 kids that this happens to so late in his life. I'm just disappointed because it was a ticking time bomb. Thank God there was someone there to give him CPR and they were able to get him to the hospital, because what if he had been out jogging and collapsed with nobody around?”

Demison collapsing on the sideline with about seven minutes left in the fourth quarter didn't draw much attention at first, even among his teammates, many of whom knew about Demison's treatment for asthma.

But it caught the eye of Pyne's wife, Erica, who was sitting with Lyver, a neighbor whose husband, Troy, is Central Catholic's team statistician.

“I thought, 'You know, maybe I should just head down there,’ " Lyver said. “By the time I got to the track, I saw that they were lifting his legs up and I thought, 'Well, this is kind of right up my alley. This might be something I might be able to help with.’ "

She asked the team's orthopedist, Dr. Jack O'Shea, if the medical staff needed help, and he agreed. They told her of Demison's history of asthma.

“I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, 'It sure doesn't look like an asthma attack,' " Lyver said. “And I looked at his eyes and there was absolutely no reaction. He wasn't breathing.”

Demison also didn't have a pulse. Lyver has worked for 16 years at Meridian Park Hospital in Tualatin, but never has been in charge of resuscitating a patient. This time, though, she took the lead, performing chest compressions. After about 60 compressions, and two rescue breaths from O'Shea, Demison's heart started beating again.

The game continued, and few were aware of the drama that had unfolded. Lyver said that nearby teammates even tried to help Demison to his feet before she made it clear that he was going to the hospital. Demison was groggy at first but regained his bearings enough to give a thumbs-up to the crowd as he was taken to the ambulance.

Hayward Demison II, a delivery driver, was in Port Angeles, Wash., on Friday night when he received a call from Green at about 9:30. By then, his son was stable, but the emotion in Green's voice told the story.

“He was telling me that he saw Hayward with his eyes rolling back in his head,” Hayward Demison II said. “He thought that he was gone. He was really scared. It really scared him.”

Said Green: “He was in my arms and I thought he was gone. We were saying, 'C'mon 21, c'mon Hayward, fight.' "

Demison's stepmother, Linda, who wasn't at the game, also received a call from Green and left to join him at the hospital. Central Catholic's coaches and players prayed for Demison on the field after the game, and most of the team -- Pyne counted 47 players -- visited him in the hospital Friday night.

Hayward Demison II made it to the hospital early Saturday morning, with a copy of the sports page that mentioned Demison's winning touchdown. He woke him up and showed it to him.

“He was like, 'Dad, I didn't get to see ‘Friday Night Lights’ last night,' " Hayward Demison II said, referring to a local television highlights show. “He was told by a lot of people he was on there.”

Perhaps he will make it on the local football highlights show next season.

“Football is his passion,” Steve Pyne said of Demison, who transferred to Central Catholic, a private school in Southeast Portland, from Gresham this year. “He has a lot of talent, and he's an extremely hard-working young man. He's a kid that can play at the next level, in my opinion.”

Thanks to Lyver, he should get a chance to find out.

“We really want to thank her,” Hayward Demison II said. “Thank God she was there.”

Said Lyver: “It was where I was supposed to be. Seventeen-year-olds aren't supposed to die, especially on the football field.”