DRUMMER FEATURE SEPTEMBER 5, 2010

'Stayin' Alive' - with Hands-only CPR

By Katie Friedman

Wright County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and Take Heart Minnesota of Wright County are teaming up to meet a goal they hope will save countless local lives in the future. Their plan?  To ensure that by the end of next year, 10 percent of this county's population will be capable of performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), on any person nearby who might be in immediate need of such life-saving measures.

This ambitious initiative includes doctors, nurses, paramedics, community leaders and, last, but not least, the citizens of Wright County.

 

Counter-attack

Each year, Sudden Cardiac Arrest, or SCA, kills an estimated 325,000 American people. SCA is a condition in which the heart stops abruptly, without warning. It can affect anyone at any age. Without swift and effective intervention, death will follow within minutes.

In an effort to battle this grimmest of prognoses, Take Heart Minnesota has hatched a comprehensive approach to resuscitation therapies, aiming to provide a better and more rapid continuum of care at every point along a patient's road to survival.

Two pilot programs, in the City of St. Cloud and Anoka County, saw SCA survival rates jump from 8.5 to 19 percent.

"They doubled their survival rates," said Kim Bemenderfer, education coordinator for Take Heart Minnesota. "After all these years of really not moving much, that's just wonderful."

Buoyed by the successes in Anoka and St. Cloud and armed with a grant from the Medtronic Foundation, Take Heart Minnesota  launched its partnership with Wright County about a year ago, she said, working its way back through every level of care an SCA victim would receive, from the hospital's cardiac care team to the heroic bystander who takes those all-important initial life-saving actions.

The initiative focuses on four key components: the lay public, first responders, emergency medical services and hospitals.

At the professional levels, the program includes training and evaluation in state-of-the-art methods, devices and drugs for post-resuscitation care.

Dr. Charles Lick, emergency medical director for Allina and Buffalo Hospitals, says that lay people are as essential as any other component to the initiative's success.

 

Quick action required

If someone collapses and is not responsive, Lick said, there are three important steps that must be taken immediately:

* First, call 911.

* Second, start CPR .

* Third, send someone to get an automated external defibrillator (AED). An AED is a user-friendly device that can restore a heart to its natural rhythm. (Allina Hospital has overseen the installation of almost 70 AEDs in Wright County and surrounding communities.) Turn it on and follow the voice prompts.

Unless these steps are taken within three to five minutes, SCA will kill its victim every time.

"It's very important, before the first responders and the ambulance get there, before the patient is transported, that a bystander knows how to perform CPR," Lick said.

"Knowing what to do will help you to feel much better about managing the situation," said Bemenderfer.

 

Stayin' alive

Hands-only CPR - traditional CPR minus the rescue breathing - is more efficient than traditional methods, Lick said, and is also easier to learn and remember. Coming into use over the past two years, it is a method he hopes will soon be well known across Wright County.

"Science has shown that it's the chest compressions that actually save lives during CPR," he said. "So it's important that people find out about this. The old method was much more complicated and difficult, the courses were expensive and long, and it carried the risk of infectious diseases, so there were a lot of big barriers to learning CPR."

The hands-only method, he said, removes every one of those obstacles. It is performed by pushing down with two hands on the victim's chest, between the nipples.  Pressure should be directed in quick, firm repetitions, at a speed of about 100 per minute.

 Lick suggests applying pressure to the beat of the Bee Gees' disco hit "Stayin' Alive."

 

Learning lifesaving

Lick also recommended a learning tool offered by the American Medical Association, called CPR Anytime, which costs about $35, and said applications for hands-only instruction are also being offered to i-Phone and i-Pad users.

"There's no test, no card," he said. "Anyone can learn this."

Training in initiative methods begins for Wright County's fire departments, first responders and public health departments this month, Bemenderfer said, and county residents should start seeing classes offered in their communities in coming months.

And any group - whether it be a church, school,  book club or any other collection of would-be lifesavers  - wishing to apply for CPR training, can do so, Lick said, by contacting Buffalo Hospital at 763-682-1212 or online at www.buffalohospital.org .

"Most incidents of SCA happen at home," Dr. Lick said. "So, the life you save may actually be your own."