Lifeline

Most people know someone who had a cardiac arrest in their immediate environment. A cardiac arrest is a sudden loss of the blood flow resulting from the failure of the heart to effectively pump. Beforehand some people can notice angina pectoris (pain on the chest), shortness of breath or nausea. Still some people don’t take that too serious and would say ‘owh it is just a small flu’ or ‘I’m old, I need to catch my breath.’ Still, some people will go to the doctor and their cardiac arrest could be prevented. The ones who don’t go, will pass out and get abnormal or absent breathing, but what are the causes of a cardiac arrest?  

We have too many to discuss so I will highlight a few. There are of course the cardiovascular diseases like coronary artery disease (myocardial infarction), heart failure, kinds of thrombosis and a load of other heart diseases. A lot of those may be caused by a bad lifestyle like smoking (your own interpretation of what), drinking and eating non-stop McDonalds and Domino’s. Some other heart disease witch people are born with and the people that have them will probably die because of a cardiac arrest. A really special disease is Ebstein’s anomaly (yes I spelled it correct it’s not Einstein). A new born child will look a bit pale, is short of breath and doesn’t grow as it should be. The child has a congenital heart defect in which the tricuspid valve are displaced towards the apex of the right ventricle of the heart. Most of the time the child needs surgery and medication before it turns 6 months old. Sometimes when it isn’t a large deviation, a surgeon chooses not to operate and to only give the child medication.  

Other groups who are in risk are people who are haemophiliac. This is a hereditary disorder that impairs the ability to make blood clots, a process needed to stop bleeding. For these people a small wound can cause a lot of blood loss. Cardiac arrest can be induced because of this this blood loss. Also normal people who got shot have a lot of blood loss, resulting in a cardiac arrest. Blood loss is one of the most used tactics to execute a death penalty. Luckily there isn’t a judge anymore who can give this punishment in Europe.  

But often a cardiac arrest happens outside the hospital. Then bystanders can intervene and call the alarm number and do CPR (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation). CPR is an emergency procedure that combines chest compressions often with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function, until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who is in cardiac arrest. You give 30 chest compressions and 2 mouth-to-mouth resuscitations, the famous 30:2 ratio. With children the ratio will be 15:2. But don’t do it on the beat of ‘Stayin’ Alive’ from the Bee Gees. Many professionals say that say that CPR performed on the beat of this song isn’t fast enough or pressing deeply enough on patients’ chests resulting in not so staying alive. To do CPR you need a proper first aid course. A nice tip to take for preventing those disasters: some of the Dutch health insurances give you some money to take one. This makes cardiac arrest a disaster which can be solved.