Half of cardiac arrest sufferers ignore potentially life saving warnings

The heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops
beating. Blood stops flowing to the brain and
other vital organs, and without treatment, within
minutes a person is typically dead.
But, a new study has suggested that sudden
cardiac arrest isn't so sudden as half of sufferers
experience warning signs hours, days, sometimes
even weeks before cardiac arrest strikes, doctors
at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles
discovered.
However, most people ignore those symptoms –
and miss a chance to save their own lives,
according to the study.
Study leader Dr Sumeet Chugh said: ‘By the time
the 911 call is made, it’s much too late for at
least 90 per cent of people.
‘There’s this window of opportunity that we didn’t
really know existed.’
The study offers the possibility of one day
preventing sudden cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest
kills nearly 350,000 people in the US alone each
year.
Though it’s commonly confused with a heart
attack, cardiac arrest is different – and much
worse.
It causes the heart’s electrical activity to be
knocked out of rhythm, abruptly stopping it from
beating.
CPR can buy time before an ambulance arrives,
but few patients survive.
As a result it’s been hard for the medical
community to tell whether cardiac arrest is a
strike with little or no advance warning.

Scientists closely tracked sudden cardiac arrest in
Portland, Oregon for more than a decade.
They examined records for nearly 1,100 people
aged 35 to 65 who suffered a cardiac arrest
between 2002 and 2012.
They also used interviews with family, friends and
strangers who witnessed the patient’s collapse.
For around a quarter of patients, the scientists
couldn’t find any information about whether they
experienced symptoms – making it tough to say
how common warning signs are.
However, of the remaining 839 patients, half had
evidence of at least one symptom in the previous
month.
Most of those people had symptoms within 24
hours of their collapse – though some came a
week before and others up to a month.
Chest pain was the most common symptom in
men. While women were more likely to experience
shortness of breath.
Other symptoms included fainting and heart
palpitations.
Furthermore, the study found that only a fraction
of patients considered their symptoms bad
enough to call 911 before they collapsed and
those people were the most likely to survive.
University of Pittsburgh emergency medicine
specialist Dr Clifton Callaway, who wasn’t
involved in the study but chairs the American
Heart Association’s emergency care committee,
said: ‘Chest pain, shortness of breath – those are
things you should come in the middle of the night
to the emergency department and get checked
out.‘We strongly recommend you don’t try to ride
it out at home.’
A person’s chances of experiencing cardiac arrest
is also increased if they’ve had previous heart
attacks, coronary heart disease and certain
inherited disorders that affect heartbeat.
People who know they are at a high risk may
receive an implanted defibrillator to shock their
heart back into rhythm.
But because cardiac arrest is such a public health
problem, the Institute of Medicine kicked off a
national campaign to teach CPR last summer, so
that bystanders know how to help.
Dr Chugh and his team weren’t able to determine
symptom severity.
The patients who called 911 about their
symptoms were mostly already diagnosed with
heart disease or had recurring symptoms.
Those patients’ survival rate was 32 per cent –
compared to six per cent for other patients.
That’s because a fifth of the patients who called
911 had their cardiac arrest on the way to the
hospital.
This study is just the start of more research to
better predict the risk factors for cardiac arrest –
and to figure out how to target them without
panicking people – Dr Chugh said.
The study was published in Annals of Internal
Medicine.