October 16th is World Restart a Heart Day! Supported by thousands of organisations across the world annually. The day aims to increase awareness about heart attacks and what to do in the event someone around you is having one – like investing in a defibrillator! Events like this one are vital to lowering the death toll from cardiac arrest.
In Australia alone, over 400,000 people have had heart attacks in their life time. On average, an Australian has a heart attack every 10 minutes. Thats around 57,000 heart attacks annually. Only 1 in 10 people who go into cardiac arrest outside of a hospital survive.
This year, World Restart a Heart Day is promoting the slogan “Call, Push, Shock”. This is to help raise awareness on what you should do in the event someone is in cardiac arrest or having a heart attack. Call an ambulance straight away. In these situations every minute before medical attention is given survival decreases. Push is to remind you to give proper CPR. You can see the guidelines for doing this here but we also recommend taking a course! Lastly, shock. Use a defibrillator as quickly as possible when needed. The good news is that if a defibrillator is used withing 3-5 minutes of the victims cardiac arrest, the chance of survival can climb to around 75% or more! The first 5 minutes are the most important when it comes to providing help to a victim. Every minute the chance of survival drops dramatically.
Click here to see more in depth information!
Everyone should also be aware of the signs of a heart attack. Someone may feel tightness, aching or pain in the chest that may spread to their neck and jaw. Some may have heartburn, nausea or abdominal pain. Being short of breath, having a cold sweat, fatigue and dizziness are also signs someone may be having a heart attack.
You can contribute to the cause in a number of ways. Making sure that your staff are aware of and have the first aid training to deal with these situations is a great first step. You can also invest in a live saving defibrillator that increases survival rates significantly.
Not only do our defibrillators provide life saving defibrillation, they also walk you through and give you feedback on your CPR compressions! research has shows that the majority of CPR given is not performed effectively – do this is a great feature.
Take a look at our defibrillators!
