It's World Heart Rhythm Week, and it's as important as ever to remain aware not only of your heart, but how to fix it if it stops going ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump. World Heart Rhythm Week serves as a crucial reminder of the importance of maintaining a healthy heart rhythm and being prepared for cardiac emergencies. 

 

What are arrythmias?

Arrhythmias are a form of heart condition that cause an abnormal heart rhythm, leading to serious health complications. Even those with healthy hearts can experience arrhythmias, and it is crucial that both healthcare professionals and the wider community remain knowledgeable and informed regarding this condition. 

 

Defibrillators

Among the key aspects of heart health, having access to defibrillators is paramount. Defibrillators deliver an electric shock to the heart in cases of life-threatening arrhythmias, such as ventricular fibrillation or ventricular tachycardia. Their primary purpose is to restore the heart's normal rhythm by interrupting the chaotic electrical activity that may be present during these emergencies. Defibrillators (defibs for short) are small, portable devices designed to deliver a controlled electrical shock to a person experiencing certain cardiac arrhythmias. In layman's terms, they're little boxes that zap somebody whose heart isn't beating properly.

This shock can essentially 'restart' the heart, returning it to a normal rhythm. Modern defibs are designed with the rescuer and rescuee both in mind, and have voice commands that instruct you on everything you need to know in order to use the defib properly. 

The most well-known form of arrhythmia is Sudden Cardiac Arrest - often referred to (inaccurately) as a heart attack. Sudden Cardiac Arrest is when the heart rhythm becomes chaotic, preventing your heart from pumping blood to your brain and the rest of your body. It's a medical emergency that, if not treated immediately, will result in death within a few minutes. There's no 'walking it off' for sudden cardiac arrest.


How common/fatal is Cardiac Arrest?

Unfortunately, over 33,000 people experience an out of hospital cardiac arrest annually, and more than 90% of them won't survive. That's 30,000 deaths a year. 

However, with proper intervention, the survival rate can be raised from a depressing 6% to a much more optimistic 74%. With these stats, if every case had proper intervention, it would drop down to around 8000 deaths a year - and saving 22,000 lives isn't something to scoff at.

 

Cardiac Arrest Symptoms

The primary symptoms of cardiac arrest are when a person:

  • is unconscious
  • is unresponsive
  • has no pulse
  • has absent or abnormal breathing.
Cardiac arrest is different to a heart attack (though the terms are often incorrectly used interchangeably) in a number of ways. A heart attack is when a person is awake and has symptoms such as pain in the chest, difficulty breathing, nausea or feeling light-headed. While both of these conditions are dangerous, cardiac arrest is more serious.
 
A heart attack can quickly deteriorate to cardiac arrest over time, but cardiac arrest can also be spontaneous and unprecedented, often with no warning signs whatsoever and even in otherwise healthy people. Many cardiac arrests occur in the home or at the workplace, but they can happen anywhere, at any time.

 

How close is a defibrillator?

An important part of cardiac arrest preparation is the presence of a defib on site. Current medical research suggests that the most vital time period for preventing fatal cardiac arrest is the first 3-5 minutes. The survival rate of somebody suffering cardiac drops by 10% every minute - meaning that after 5 minutes, it's flipping a coin on whether they live or die, and after 10 minutes, they're going to need a miracle to get out alive.

This is because cardiac arrest is when the heart's rhythm is arrested. As we all know, the heart is one of our most vital organs, responsible for pumping blood around the body. When the heart stops, the blood stops, and this can quickly lead to permanent damage to the brain and everything else inside you. 

So, how close is your defib? It is recommended that there is a defib within 90 seconds walk of your location at any one point, for a 180 second (3 minute) round trip. Any longer and there is serious risk of not being able to get the life-saving defib to the person in need before it's too late. Not only that, it needs to be well-marked and easy to find. You don't want anybody to get confused because the first aid cupboard is stuffed to bursting and they don't know what the defib looks like or just can't find it.

Many defibrillators come with special cabinets you can attach to a wall for ease of access. In public spaces like shops, this should also be easily accessible by customers - if somebody has to talk to the manager in order to save a life, there's a serious safety concern.

 

Slap the defib on and you're done, right?

Wrong. A defibrillator is only a small part (but an important one) of the cardiac arrest intervention process. Before and after the defib, there are plenty of other steps involved - not the least of which being calling 000. All cases of cardiac arrest should be addressed with the system of Call, Push, Shock.

Call - Call 000 and request an ambulance to your location. Cardiac arrest is a life and death emergency, and needs immediate medical attention even in the best of cases. 

Push - Push the patient's chest for cardiopulmonary respiration (CPR). Some defibs come with a CPR instruction or feedback module, which will advise even somebody with no first aid training as to how to properly perform CPR. (We would strongly recommend first aid training regardless)

Shock - Shock the patient with the defib. All modern defibrillators have an in-built system which will advise you on whether or not the patient needs to be shocked after the defib is properly attached. For some defibrillators, you will need to push a button to administer the shock, while with others the shock will be automatically performed after a short countdown. In both instances the defibrillator will only advise a shock if the person actually requires it. 

 

Can I get it wrong?

No. Not only are defibrillators designed to only work on people who need the shock (by detecting irregular heart rhythms before firing), but even if you happen to zap a healthy person, they'll be fine. The shock administered by a defib is not powerful enough to kill or even permanently injure somebody. If you happen to shock yourself, you'll just be in for a nasty... shock. 

Furthermore, if somebody is both unconscious and not breathing, they are as good as dead without help. While the chances of breaking ribs with CPR is incredibly low, it's true that there is some possibility of this. However: It doesn't matter. You can survive with a few broken ribs. You can't survive when you're dead.

Not only that, but there are Good Samaritan laws in Australia that prevent anybody acting in good faith from being held legally liable for anything that happens to the patient. CPR and the use of a defibrillator is vital for every single case of potential cardiac arrest. 

The one thing you can get wrong is only following some (or none) of the Call Push Shock steps. Ambulance response times are an average of 8-12 minutes in Australia - which gives a 20% chance of survival at best if you only call for help. CPR is the most important step, as it keeps the blood flowing around the body while the heart can't, but the shock is essential for getting the body to do the heavy lifting because not even the best CPR can keep somebody going indefinitely. All three steps are vital and all must be performed in order to maximise the chance of survival.

 

For further information, check out FastAid's Defibrillator White Paper here