Today Orchard House staff completed their annual Medical Emergencies, CPR & AED training.

What is a cardiac arrest?

A cardiac arrest is when your heart suddenly stops pumping blood round your body, commonly because of a problem with electrical signals in your heart.
If your heart stops pumping blood, your brain is starved of oxygen. This causes you to fall unconscious and stop breathing.
A cardiac arrest is a medical emergency. If you witness a cardiac arrest, you can increase the person’s chances of survival by phoning 999 immediately and giving CPR.

Did you know that only 1 in 10 people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest?

Each year in Britain around 30,000 people are struck by sudden cardiac arrest outside of hospital environments. They can affect anyone at any time – from young children at school, to adults when they’re at home, work or out in public places.

Like a lot of other medical emergencies, the potential for saving a life is dependent upon time; the faster you get help the better the chance of survival.

What is CPR?

CPR stands for ‘cardiopulmonary resuscitation’ and refers to the basic first aid procedures. This is to keep someone alive until the emergency medical services can get to the scene.
The most important skills are chest compressions to pump blood around the body, and rescue breaths, (also called the ‘kiss of life’) to provide oxygen.

Click the picture below to learn about how to perform CPR and watch a video

How YOU can help!

To perform CPR, follow these simple steps – as per the advert, to the beat of Staying Alive!:

1: Shake and shout – is the person responsive? Shout for help.
2: Check for normal breathing
3: Call 999
4: Start CPR and find out if there is a defibrillator nearby
Give 30 chest compressions
Give two rescue breaths
Repeat until an ambulance arrives

Remember – if you haven’t trained in CPR with rescue breathing, you can still use hands-only CPR.

The only method available to revert cardiac arrest rhythms is the use of a defibrillator.
An AED (Automated External Defibrillator) is a device that detects lethal heart rhythms which stop the heart from pumping effectively, and then allows a rescuer to deliver a measured shock to a revert these rhythms, so the heart can pump effectively again. There are more and more Public access Defibrillators available these days at Supermarkets, Public places and even Pubs!

Statistically, for every minute lost without defibrillation, you lose 10% probability of saving a life. When a measured shock to a person’s heart, suffering a lethal rhythm within the first minute, they have a 70% chance of survival.

However, if victims aren’t treated properly, more often than not, cardiac arrests are fatal.

If you’re on your own, don’t interrupt CPR to go and get a defibrillator. If it’s possible, send someone else to find one. When you call 999, the operator can tell you if there’s a public access defibrillator nearby.