Sudden Cardiac Arrest -- What the heck is it?
Here's the short answer: A Sudden Cardiac Arrest occurs when your heart suddenly stops beating.
Here's an even shorter answer: You drop dead.
OK, you're not really dead. Yet. Here's the longer answer.
The fact is you may think you're healthy as a horse; fit as a fiddle; or any of a number of other silly health-related cliches. In fact, dropping dead from a Sudden Cardiac Arrest is all too often the first symptom a person experiences that alerts them to the fact that they have a heart "condition." When a person suffers a Sudden Cardiac Arrest, the most common result (95%) is Sudden Cardiac Death.
Ventricular fibrillation, the primary cause of Sudden Cardiac Arrest, occurs when the heart's pumping centers, the ventricles, begin to beat too fast -- up to 350 beats per minute. Actually, they're not really even beating anymore. They're quivering and totally out of control.
If ventricular fibrillation is not stopped within a few minutes, death results. In fact, if as little as about 4 minutes go by without treatment, serious, long-term organ damage begins.
The only way to stop ventricular fibrillation is by applying an electrical shock to the heart using a defibrillator, such as the Philips OnSite Defibrillator.
Basically, your heart is a pump powered by electrical signals. If those signals become disturbed, the ventricles may begin to vibrate or flutter in an irregular manner. This is called "fibrillation." As a result, the ventricles are not able to pump the blood through the blood vessels. When the heart stops pumping, blood no longer flows through your body. When oxygen-rich blood stops nourishing your brain, you lose consciousness. If "de-fibrillation" does not occur immediately, you die.
In fact, for every minute that passes without your heart receiving an electrical shock from a defibrillator, your chances for survival decline by 10%. After 10 minutes, your chances for survival are less than 1%.
Note that while it is possible for one to experience a Sudden Cardiac Arrest without any underlying heart disease, this is highly unusual and pretty much confined to people engaged in recreational drug use or to those who suffer a severe trauma. And by severe trauma, we mean like maybe your kid out playing soccer or baseball or basketball or tennis (get the picture?) takes a hit in the chest.
Usually a Sudden Cardiac Arrest occurs in an individual with some form of previous heart disease, such as previous heart attack (resulting in heart damage), coronary artery disease or artheroschlerosis.
The good news is that just about anyone can use an Automated External Defibrillator (AED), such as the Philips Onsite Defibrillator, to apply that electrical shock to the heart and restore a normal beat.
Don't Drop Dead
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