Teaching students CPR before they graduate would put thousands of qualified lifesavers on our streets every year and progress toward that nationwide goal is being achieved. Within the last month, two states have passed legislation that will require all high school students to learn the life-saving skill.Tennessee and Minnesota’s victories help pave the way for other state legislatures that are considering similar bills.

Want to help advocate for CPR in schools in your state? Take the pledge at www.BeCPRSmart.org today!

In the recent shootings in Tucson, lives literally were saved by the immediate response of a surprising number of ordinary citizens who happened to have been trained in basic first aid.

In one case, a woman who had gone to the Safeway to buy beef broth and ended up crawling on the ground and saving lives before the emergency medical teams arrived. Only months earlier, she had taken a refresher first-aid course through her work.

Many companies, to their credit, offer employee training in first aid, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation. But many who may be quite willing to help when others lie stricken simply lack basic first-aid skills that can make the difference between life and death in those initial minutes before trained emergency medical responders arrive.

First-aid training is simple. For years, corporations have trained employees as initial responders for in-house emergencies, and the trend is growing to ensure that business travelers also have basic skills.  At some companies, first-aid and emergency-response training is now part of the orientation for the international traveler.

Individuals must be willing to engage, and it seems as if the people of Tucson have a strong community sense that if someone is in dire need, they will jump in.  Willingness in an emergency matters a great deal more when coupled with basic skills. “If you have someone who can follow appropriate directions, you are way ahead of the curve before emergency technicians and physicians enter the picture.

First-aid training was once mainly offered through community organizations. Schools now do a good job, but in recent years the focus for adults has moved more into corporations. “More and more people are getting it through work as opposed to other associations they were involved with.

There are countless physical activities out there, but walking has the lowest dropout rate of them all. It’s the easiest positive change you can make to effectively improve your heart health. Research has shown that walking for at least 30 minutes a day can help you:

• Reduce the risk of coronary heart disease
• Improve blood pressure and blood sugar levels
• Improve blood lipid profile
• Maintain body weight and lower the risk of obesity
• Enhance mental well being
• Reduce the risk of osteoporosis
• Reduce the risk of breast and colon cancer
• Reduce the risk of non-insulin dependent (type 2) diabetes

Want more tools? Download our Six Weeks of Walking Tip Guide and 6 Heart Healthy Recipes and let National Walking Day become the start of a new lifestyle!

• Dispatchers should help 9-1-1 callers identify cardiac arrest victims and coach callers to provide immediate CPR.
• If more dispatchers followed these processes, thousands of lives could be saved every year.
• Communities should regularly evaluate 9-1-1 emergency dispatchers’ performance and the overall emergency response system, according to a new American Heart Association statement.

EMBARGOED UNTIL 3 p.m. CT/4 p.m. ET, Monday, Jan. 9

DALLAS, Jan. 9, 2012 — More people will survive sudden cardiac arrest when 9-1-1 dispatchers help bystanders assess victims and begin CPR immediately, according to a new American Heart Association scientific statement published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

In the 2010 resuscitation guidelines, the association advised 9-1-1 dispatchers to help bystanders assess anyone who may have had a cardiac arrest and then direct them to begin CPR.

The new scientific statement provides more specific information about how emergency dispatchers should provide such help and highlights the importance of assessing the dispatcher’s actions and other performance measures.

A key goal of the new statement is to increase how often bystanders perform CPR, one of the weaker links in the “Chain of Survival.”

“I think it’s a call to arms,” said E. Brooke Lerner, Ph.D., lead author of the statement and associate professor of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. “It isn’t as common as you think, that you call 9-1-1 and they tell you what to do.”

The association makes four recommendations for emergency medical services (EMS) systems and 9-1-1 dispatchers:

• Dispatchers should assess whether someone has had a cardiac arrest and if so, tell callers how to administer CPR immediately.
• Dispatchers should confidently give Hands-Only CPR instructions for adults who have had a cardiac arrest not caused by asphyxia (as in drowning).
• Communities should measure performance of dispatchers and local EMS agencies, including how long it takes until CPR is begun.
• Performance measurements should be part of a quality assurance program involving the entire emergency response system including EMS and hospitals.

More than 380,000 Americans each year are assessed by EMS for sudden cardiac arrest, which occurs when electrical impulses in the heart go awry and cause it to stop beating normally. Only 11 percent of people who experience sudden cardiac arrest outside the hospital setting survive.

Strengthening the links in the “Chain of Survival” — the processes that can improve the chance of surviving sudden cardiac arrest — could improve those odds further. These links include recognizing cardiac arrest quickly and calling 9-1-1; early CPR; rapid defibrillation;effective advanced life support; andintegrated post-cardiac arrest care.

In communities where awareness is high and the Chain of Survival is strong, the usual survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest can be doubled, Lerner said.

People who lack CPR training but encounter someone who needs it are often afraid to act. Even if the patient is suffering from something other than cardiac arrest, “the chances that you’re going to hurt somebody are very, very small,” she said. “And if you do nothing, they’re not getting the help that’s going to save their life.”

Since 2008, the American Heart Association has urged that untrained bystanders quickly begin Hands-Only CPR for adults who are unresponsive and not breathing or only gasping. Research has shown that skipping mouth-to-mouth breaths during conventional CPR doesn’t reduce survival rates in the first few minutes of CPR, and enables chest compressions to begin about a minute sooner.

“We know that early chest compressions can improve outcomes,” Lerner said.

Conventional CPR with compressions and breaths is recommended for all infants and children and for adults whose cardiac arrest is likely to have been caused by asphyxia.

Training dispatchers and implementing the statement’s recommendations requires commitment from an entire community, Lerner said. “It takes a lot of people believing in it to make it happen.”

Co-authors are Thomas D. Rea, M.D., M.P.H.; Bentley J. Bobrow, M.D.; Joe E. Acker III, E.M.T.-P., M.P.H.; Robert A. Berg, M.D.; Steven C. Brooks, M.D., M.H.Sc.; David C. Cone, M.D.; Marc Gay, B.A., E.M.T.-P.; Lana M. Gent, Ph.D.; Greg Mears, M.D.; Vinay M. Nadkarni, M.D.; Robert E. O’Connor, M.D., M.P.H.; Jerald Potts, Ph.D.; Michael R. Sayre, M.D.; Robert A. Swor, D.O.; and Andrew H. Travers, M.D., M.Sc.

The authors produced the statement on behalf of the American Heart Association Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee and the Council on Cardiopulmonary, Critical Care, Perioperative, and Resuscitation (3-CPR).

SAN ANTONIO — You don’t have to be old or tall to save a life. Six-year-old Jasiah Rubalcava is proof of that.

Last week, Rubalcava was eating in the cafeteria at West Avenue Elementary when his best friend started choking.

“Nicholas was choking and I saw his face turn red,” Rubalcava said.

He didn’t want to wait around for a cafeteria worker. Instead, he sprang into action, wrapping his arms around the red-faced Nicholas Carvajal. He performed the Heimlich maneuver and successfully dislodged the snack that was stuck in the child’s throat.

“Thank you,” Nicholas said as he wrapped his arms around his friend. “For saving my life, buddy.” He added patting him on the back.

Rubalcava’s mother said this is a great reminder of how important it is to teach first aid to your children. She’s already dreaming of him becoming a paramedic.

Credit: KENS 5 staff

by KAREN GRACE

KENS5

Posted on March 8, 2012 at 10:55 AM

“As I say to many of my patients, if you don’t find time for exercise, you will have to find time for disease,” Dr. Nanette Wenger tells CNN.  She’s  a spokesperson for the American Heart Association (AHA) and  a cardiologist at the Emory University School of Medicine.

February is American Heart Month, when the AHA and other organizations hope to spread awareness about the dangers of an unhealthy lifestyle. The statistics haven’t changed: Cardiovascular disease is still the leading killer of men and women in the United States and worldwide.

“The key to reducing this threat is prevention, and among the major preventive interventions– smoking cessation, control of cholesterol, control of blood pressure, control of weight and physical activity– physical activity can often be the cornerstone,” Wenger said.

“It will help in weight maintenance, blood pressure control and cholesterol control.”

You’ve probably heard this message before, but may find yourself still making excuses for not exercising regularly: Lack of finances, lack of access to a gym, or various other responsibilities that leave you short on time.

But the people who get the most benefit from increased physical activity may surprise you.

“It’s not the runner who tells me she’s running 20 miles a week and she’s gonna start doing 30 miles a week, said Barry Franklin, Ph.D., who is the director of Cardiac Rehabilitation and Exercise Laboratories at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, and an AHA spokesperson.

“It’s the sedentary person who starts doing some exercise - even if it’s 10, 15, 20 minutes two, three days a week.”

The American Heart Association hopes to help you start walking by identifying free, safe paths across the United States. They have also recognized companies who are “Fit-Friendly” and go above and beyond helping their employees develop healthier workplace environments.

The steps are small, but the results can be huge. Some of these companies have:

- Organized a challenge in the stairwell to get employees to take the stairs
- Organized events like volleyball games and group hikes
- Held meetings with chair exercises at the beginning
- Held on-site farmers markets or cooking demonstrations
- Swapped out regular items in vending machines with healthier options
- Had employees ride a tricycle around a plant instead of an electric or battery-powered golf cart

The AHA also has some tips on what you can do to incorporate more exercise into your day:

- Watch television from the treadmill or bicycle
- Take the stairs instead of the elevator
- Park far away from the building you work in
- If you use public transportation, get off a stop early and walk a little longer to work
- Walk down the hallway while brainstorming with a colleague
- Use the farthest printer on your floor or another
- Use the restroom on another floor and climb the stairs
- Visit a colleague in person rather than e-mail or calling them
- Use a cycle machine under your desk

Taking these steps is important because lack of activity can have dire consequences.

“Over a period of time, there is good research to say that people who are inactive have up to a 50% higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease,” Franklin said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity, like brisk walking, each week for most adults.

And you don’t have to do it all at once. You’ll reap the benefits even if you break these 2 1/2 hours of weekly exercise into 10-minute chunks of time – as long as the your workout is at least moderate to vigorous during these small intervals.

From Feb. 15 through March 15, students can help their schools train the next generation of lifesavers and win prizes by visitingbethebeat.heart.org and completing these brief activities as part of the School Challenge:

• watching a 2-minute Hands-Only™ CPR video
• playing an automated external defibrillator game
• exploring the cardiac arrest section of the interactive, high-end animation in the HeartTrek
• taking a quiz

Each time students complete one of the activities, their school is awarded points.  A random prize pack will be awarded to the top three schools with the highest percentage completion rate in each of five categories – Home School, Very Small (under 200 students), Small (201-499), Medium (500-999) and Large (1,000-plus).

Those top schools will have a chance to win the grand prize – a video shot and produced on campus and posted on the American Heart Association’s Be the Beat website – by submitting an essay about what makes their school a “lifesaver school.”

Washington, DC— Patients coming to the emergency department with severe pain are not any more likely to suffer heart attack or death than those with mild or moderate pain. A study published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine contradicts the widely held assumption that high pain scores indicate a high risk of acute coronary syndrome (“Relationship Between Pain Severity and Outcomes in Patients Presenting with Potential Acute Coronary Syndromes”).
“It is common for lay people to cite high pain scores as a reason for patients to remain in the hospital for further testing, but our study demonstrates that is not necessarily evidence-based,” said lead study author Anna Marie Chang, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Penn. Our study provides further evidence that there is no typical presentation for acute coronary syndrome.”

Researchers examined the records of 3,306 patients who went to the emergency department with symptoms of acute coronary syndrome. Three percent of the patients with a mild or moderate pain score and 3.9 percent of patients with severe pain score had a cardiovascular event during hospitalization. Looking at 30-day outcomes, researchers found 5.8 percent of patients with mild or moderate pain score and 7.3 percent of patients with severe pain score had an outcome of either death, revascularization or acute myocardial infarction (AMI or heart attack). However, when adjusted for sex, race, TIMI risk score and mode of arrival, pain score was not an independent predictor of 30-day cardiovascular events

Chest pain and related symptoms cause six million visits to the emergency department and approximately two million hospital admissions every year. In the end, only a minority of these patients are diagnosed with heart problems. Two to five percent of patients with AMI are inappropriately discharged from the emergency department and the failure to accurately diagnose AMI is the single greatest contributor to financial losses in malpractice claims against emergency medicine.

“The issue of chest pain severity in the emergency department is complex,” said Dr. Chang. “As many as one-third of heart attacks may go unrecognized by patients, so people with chest pain should still get to the emergency department as quickly as possible to be evaluated. But patients with severe chest pain are not necessarily at increased risk for acute coronary syndrome, and though pain management is very important, pain severity itself should not be a factor in evaluating a patient’s risk for heart attack.”

Annals of Emergency Medicine is the peer-reviewed scientific journal for the American College of Emergency Physicians, a national medical society. ACEP is committed to advancing emergency care through continuing education, research, and public education. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, ACEP has 53 chapters representing each state, as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. A Government Services Chapter represents emergency physicians employed by military branches and other government agencies. For more information visitwww.acep.org

Detectives determined that no crime or criminal negligence occurred as a result of the actions of school personnel, Ammaria’s mother or the child who gave Ammaria the peanut, police said.

There is no cure for food allergies, and a person can develop them at any age. The only treatments available are antihistamines for mild reactions and injected epinephrine for anaphylaxis — severe, life-threatening reactions in which the airway closes and the person is unable to breathe.

To make matters worse, food allergies are on the rise, although no one knows why. The number of kids with food allergies increased 18% from 1997 to 2007, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, researchers found that 8% of children under age 18 in the United States have at least one food allergy.

CNN received more than 1,000 comments from readers responding to the initial report of Ammaria’s death, many of which questioned the responsibility of the school. Some readers said portable epinephrine injectors should be on hand at all schools and child-care institutions. “And what if a child has their FIRST reaction at a school (i.e., they didn’t know they were allergic)? It would be their LAST reaction if the school is not properly equipped to handle it,” commenter Boater39 wrote.

Most school districts have some sort of written policy on food policy management, said Maria Acebal, chief executive officer of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network. Normally, epinephrine prescribed to individual students is kept at school.

“All the school policies I’m aware of require the parent to turn in the medication and to have the school keep it readily on hand,” she said. And some states have schools that allow students, with appropriate consent, to carry their prescribed medication on them (Acebal’s organization keeps this list of states and their policies).

Some states, but not the majority, allow schools to have a stock of epinephrine — not specifically prescribed to anyone — to give in an emergency to any student who is suffering from an anaphylactic reaction. They may also permit the training of teachers and other staff in the use of epinephrine injectors.

Lawmakers are paying attention to the issue. Legislation introduced to the House and Senate toward the end of 2011, the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act, encourages states to require schools to have a stock of epinephrine that can be used for any student who is having an allergic reaction.

By some estimates, 25% of allergic reactions that occur in school involve children not known to have had an allergy before, Acebal said. And it’s a myth that a person’s first allergic reaction won’t be a serious one, doctors say.

There’s no way to know how severely a child will react to any given food to which he or she has a known allergy; any exposure may result in reactions ranging from nothing to a few hives to an inability to breathe.

“The more staff at a school that are trained on food allergy safety, the safer the environment for kids with food allergies,” Acebal said.

Even if you think your child is having an allergic reaction to a food for the first time, it’s likely that he or she has been exposed before, in utero, or through contact, or when it has been an ingredient in other foods. Once sensitization occurs, allergy can ensue, says Dr. Clifford Bassett, fellow of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology and an allergist based in New York.

Acebal’s oldest daughter had a reaction to peanuts the first time she ate them, when she was less than 2 years old. Two injections of epinephrine saved her life.

It is possible to develop an allergy at any age; to some extent, it is unpredictable. But there are certain risk factors: a strong evidence of family history, seasonal and indoor allergies, eczema and asthma. A child with one or more of those should be evaluated for food allergies by a board-certified allergist, said Bassett, also a fellow of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

An allergy test can help identify which foods may put a child at risk of anaphylaxis and other reactions. Tiny doses of allergen are placed under the skin, and those that produce a small bump are the likely problem foods. Unfortunately, this test does not predict how severe a reaction to eating that food would be.

Education is key to managing food allergies, Bassett said. Knowing what foods to avoid, learning how to read ingredient labels on food products and taking the initiative to ask about problem foods when eating outside the home are all essential. “Preparedness is part of the overall goal,” he said.

Every child at risk of food-allergic reactions should have an allergy action plan on file with the school that is signed by a doctor, and an epinephrine injector available at school, Bassett said. The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network has an emergency action plan online you can adapt to your needs for school and other child-care purposes.

A person who is experiencing anaphylaxis needs to receive epinephrine immediately; rapid decline and death can occur within 30 to 60 minutes, according to the National Institutes of Health. Repeat doses may be necessary, which is why doctors recommend having two epinephrine auto-injectors on hand in case of emergency.