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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Are You Safe When Your Heart Stopping Beating in Hospital? If you think rescue will arrive in time when your heart stop beating in hospital in United States, then you probably have to pray hard for such miracle to happen. Hospital has all the necessary equipments and why a victim cannot be saved in time? In the January 3, 2008’s issue of New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from St Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri reported that about one-third of United States patients, who have cardiac arrest and are happened to be in the hospital, do not get a potentially life-saving shock within the recommended 2 minutes. This is unfortunately contradicting to the belief that a hospital would be the best place to save a cardiac arrest victim. In fact, people who do not get defibrillation in time are very likely to die, get brain damaged or end up disabled. In fact, for every minute of delay, the chances of survival worsen.
When cardiac arrest arises, normal circulation of the blood will stop suddenly due to failure of the heart to contract effectively during systole. Technically, a cardiac arrest is different from, but may be caused by, a heart attack or myocardial infarction, where blood flow to the still-beating heart is interrupted. A number of studies have centered on getting quicker treatment for heart attacks occurring outside hospitals, and on providing defibrillators at public places like airports and schools. Instead, the current study looked at how response time affects survival rate inside hospitals. Using data from a United States registry of 369 hospitals that track response times and outcomes, the researchers found that 39 percent of those quickly treated would survive and leave the hospital, compared with only 22 percent of those whose treatment was delayed beyond the 2-minute guideline.The data included 6,789 cases of cardiac arrest caused by an abnormal heart rhythm, the type that would most require getting shocked back to a normal heartbeat. Those occurred in intensive-care units or regular units were included, while those in the emergency room or during surgery were excluded. More than 50 percent of the patients received defibrillation in less than 1 minute, but for about 30 percent, it took more than 2 minutes and sometimes more than 6 minutes for them to get defibrillation. According to the report, delays were seen mostly at smaller hospitals, after hours or on weekends, and for patients who were not regularly being monitored or were admitted for non-heart problems. One way to overcome such delay is to make automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, available throughout hospitals to let nurses use them when emergency arises without the need to wait for doctors to deliver shocks, as suggested by the researchers. AEDs have already been made available in public places, so there is no reason why the same could not be implemented in hospitals. Meanwhile, other experts also propose using wireless technology that enables more patients around the hospital to have heart monitors.
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