Automated external defibrillators
The school board is expected to accept 300 donated defibrillators from the Texas Arrhythmia Institute next week. The total value is about $650,000. The campuses need to send their nurses and other key personnel to training sessions beginning next month.
In the past few years, several student athletes have died suddenly of cardiac arrest, according to Dr. Nadim Nasir Jr., a cardiologist and senior researcher for the Houston-based Texas Arrhythmia Institute. The device’s life-saving potential can be important not only for students, but also for staff members and visitors.
Officials believe the donation will make HISD the largest American school district to outfit all of its schools with defibrillators.
When a person has a sudden heart attack, these defibrillators can be the difference between life and death, according to Stratford’s EMS Chief Donna Best.
Don Czaplinski, co-owner of I’ll Take Manhattan, said the business would donate a portion of its weekend sales to the effort.
Mayor James R. Miron is now trying to raise enough money to install the defibrillators in all town buildings and schools, because there is no such device in Town Hall and other municipal or school buildings.
Medtronic’s 13 percent drop biggest since ‘84
Fear that the market for implantable defibrillators might be shrinking, makes the device stocks continue freefall.
Medtronic Inc.’s shares fell by $6.61 or 13 percent in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The decline was the biggest in 22 years. Many companies such as Natick, Mass.-based Boston Scientific Corp., Little Canada-based St. Jude Medical suffered a great loss in stock market.
According to Medtronic, U.S. sales of the devices declined 6 percent in the quarter ended July 28. Surgeons are implanting fewer of the $30,000 defibrillators than last year.
Sales of implantable defibrillators have slowed from a 25 percent growth rate in 2004 and 2005, partly because of the product recalls. Medtronic and St. Jude. Boston Scientific and Guidant collectively have recalled 136,200 defibrillators since June 2005.
The slowdown in defibrillator sales suggests a larger problem and a bigger market development challenge, according to Bruce Nudell, an analyst with Sanford Bernstein & Co. in New York.
Provides sheriff’s department with fund for 3 defibrillators
Exelon Nuclear donated $4,000 to help Grundy County sheriff get three additional defibrillators. Each device was approximately $1,300.
Automatic External Defibrillators send electric charge or shock to restore normal heart rhythm, when the heartbeat is fatally fast due to ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation.
Between 1999 and 2004, the sheriff’s department responded to ambulance calls 332 times on the average, according to Grundy County Sheriff’s Sergeant Jeff Cole. In 2001, on more than 70 percent occasions that the department responded to, the sheriff’s deputy arrived first on the scene.
The sheriff’s goal is to eventually own 18 AEDs to complete all squad cars, 12 more than the department’s current six.
For now, they’ve equipped the cars they send out to the rural areas, because often in those cases the sheriff’s department will beat the ambulance service to the scene.
The sheriff’s office received the AEDs in June and they are already available in the patrol unit.
This was not because companies were in greater compliance with government regulations, but because top FDA officials increasingly overruled subordinates’ desire to enforce regulations, according to the newspaper.
Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, noted that the FDA receives some $380 million a year from drug companies and device makers.
When the child was pulled from the water, he was unconscious and had no pulse. Rescuers tried to use a rescue breathing mask to resuscitate him, but it didn’t work.
Poolside rescuers looked for a defibrillator, but there wasn’t one in the pool area. Michigan law doesn’t require defibrillators around pools. Emergency medical personnel arrived, but by then it was too late.
The American Red Cross has recommended that automated external defibrillators be widely distributed in schools, workplaces, malls, airports, and any place where people gather and where someone might suffer a sudden cardiac arrest.
Starting next year, the state of Michigan will mandate that health clubs and gyms have defibrillators and staff will be trained to use them.
According to University of Michigan Health System, any place where a defibrillator is used at least once every seven years makes sense. And lawmakers should go a step further and require defibrillators at public pools.
The equipment can be used during school hours and during after-school activities, such as sporting events, meetings or musical performances. They will not only benefit students, faculty and staff of West Liberty, but also benefit any parent, grandparent or visitor on the school grounds.
The idea was presented to the board two years ago by Mercy Hospital representative Kelly Garvin. The board wanted time to research the equipment before making the purchase. Liability and issues regarding the difficulty of using the equipment were also raised.
Each school building, elementary school, middle school, high school and administrative building will have a defibrillator available.
The board will also decide where it makes the most sense to place the defibrillators within the schools.
On May 21, Shults was at the end of a challenging, two-week Oregon Marine Board course for public safety officials at Camp Rilea. The stress of the exercise and a blockage in an artery near his heart had sent him into cardiac arrest.
Shults was lucky that day. A defibrillator was nearby, and several paramedics were part of the class. He was shocked back to life and returned to work last week.
Sudden cardiac arrest is like an electrical storm in the heart, and the machine delivers a shock that’s like hitting control-alt-delete on a computer, rebooting the heart, according to Shaun Lisenby, the district manager of Philips Medical Systems, manufacturer of the Heart Start FRX defibrillator.
Defibrillators have gotten smaller and smaller, they’ve also gotten easier to use. Current models are made to stand up under rugged use.
Weighing about five pounds, the device has three buttons and a gentle voice that can lead anyone through restarting a heart. “We’ve made it so easy anyone can do it,” Lisenby said.
Gov. Jeb Bush has signed two new laws that will put heart defibrillators in most of Florida’s 159 state parks. The laws increase chances that a life-saving device will be within reach if park visitors and young athletes suffer a cardiac arrest.
The new laws in Florida follow the death last year of Matthew Miulli, a Tampa high school baseball player. Miulli died of cardiac arrest during a preseason practice. He might have been saved if a defibrillator had been nearby.
The resulting law, the Gordon & Miulli Act, is named for Miulli and a South Florida teen who also died. It allows nonprofit groups like Little League baseball and community football teams to apply for grant money from the state and from county commissioners in each county.
More than 200,000 Americans die each year of cardiac arrest. But up to 50,000 deaths — one in four — could be prevented if a defibrillator was immediately available, according to the American Red Cross.
Small portable defibrillators can shock a heart back into normal rhythm. They have been put in offices, airplanes and public buildings across the nation for years. Advocates now want to place them in as many places as possible, because they boost survival rates by 50 percent if used quickly.
Automated external defibrillators are dropping in price, however, many local school officials, especially in small counties, say they can’t afford the costs. But in the wake of Miulli’s death, the Florida High School Athletic Association last year made it mandatory for every school in the state to have defibrillators at all district, state and regional sports events.