CPR and AED Plus Score Big at Pickup Basketball Game
OCt. 14, 2011 - October is Sudden Cardiac Arrest Month, and awareness is what helped save a Massachusetts man who collapsed at a pick-up basketball game last month. The first heroes are the men who performed CPR and used the automated external defibrillator (AED), including a strength coach for the Boston Celtics. The next hero is the doctor who had the AED placed in the Newton, Mass., gym 6 years ago and has maintained it ever since He had a friend who died, and he wanted to make sure that an AED would be available in case of emergency.
The average survival rate of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year is 7%.1 If an AED is used by a bystander, the rate increase to 38%.2
1 American Heart Association. Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics – 2009 Update. Dallas, Texas: American Heart Association, 2009.
2 Weisfeldt ML, Sitlani CM, Ornato JP, et al., on behalf of the ROC Investigators. J Am Coll Cardiol 2010;55:1713-1720.
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