Certified by the American Heart
Association as a BLS (basic life support) Instructor and as a Certified
Heartsaver First Aid Instructor.
Over ten years experience working in the
health care field.
Serving Palm
Beach, Broward and Martin Counties and surrounding areas
Call today to
schedule a class
561-379-9221
CPR & Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA)
Fact Sheet
Anyone can learn CPR – and
everyone should! Sadly, 70 percent of Americans may feel helpless to act during
a cardiac emergency because they either do not know how to administer CPR or
their training has significantly lapsed. This alarming statistic could hit close
to home, because home is exactly where 88 percent of cardiac arrests occur. Put
very simply: The life you save with CPR is mostly likely to be someone you love.
Don’t be afraid; your actions
can only help. If you see an unresponsive adult who is not breathing or not
breathing normally, call 911 and push hard and fast on the center of the chest.
WHY LEARN CPR?
Cardiac arrests are more
common than you think, and they can happen to anyone at any time.
Nearly 383,000
out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests occur annually, and 88 percent of
cardiac arrests occur at home.
Many victims appear
healthy with no known heart disease or other risk factors.
Sudden cardiac arrest is
not the same as a heart attack.
Sudden cardiac arrest
occurs when electrical impulses in the heart become rapid or chaotic, which
causes the heart to suddenly stop beating.
A heart attack
occurs when the blood supply to part of the heart muscle is blocked. A heart
attack may cause cardiac arrest
WHO CAN YOU
SAVE WITH CPR?
The life you save with CPR is
mostly likely to be a loved one.
Four out of five
cardiac arrests happen at home.
Statistically
speaking, if called on to administer CPR in an emergency, the life you save
is likely to be someone at home: a child, a spouse, a parent or a friend.
African-Americans are
almost twice as likely to experience cardiac arrest at home, work or in
another public location than Caucasians, and their survival rates are twice
as poor as for Caucasians.
WHY TAKE
ACTION?
Failure to act in a
cardiac emergency can lead to unnecessary deaths.
Effective bystander CPR
provided immediately after sudden cardiac arrest can double or triple a
victim’s chance of survival, but only 32 percent of cardiac arrest victims
get CPR from a bystander.
Sadly, less than eight
percent of people who suffer cardiac arrest outside the hospital survive.
The American Heart
Association trains more than 12 million people in CPR annually, to equip
Americans with the skills they need to perform bystander CPR.
