It’s time to get hands-on and #RestartAHeart
Sudden cardiac arrests (when the heart stops pumping blood around your body) happen every day, many of them out of hospital and in the UK, just one in ten people survive*.
Around 80% of those cardiac arrests happen in the home and as people are spending more time at home during COVID-19, that statistic may even be higher at the moment. Learning CPR guarantees that you have the skills to help your baby, child, parent, any loved ones and those in your community if you’re out and about and before the emergency services arrive.
It’s a sad fact that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the chance of survival in many countries might have decreased further because fewer bystanders are intervening when they see someone that has collapsed and stopped breathing.
Together with the Resuscitation Council, we’re urging everyone in the UK to learn CPR right now. Because right now, there are people across this country who will need you to perform CPR if they have a cardiac arrest.
The steps you should take when performing CPR have changed – but the need to perform CPR has not. Whether you’ve learnt CPR before or this is your first time, this is an opportunity to learn how CPR guidance has changed during COVID-19 so you feel confident in knowing what to do in an emergency.
“Note that compressions most likely won’t restart a person’s heart (only an electric shock will do that) BUT it will keep the heart pumping and provide oxygen to the brain and other organs until medical help arrives.” “It is quite normal for an adult to vomit when they are unconscious. If you don’t know the victim and are concerned about giving rescue breaths, the most important thing is to give compressions.”
The Resuscitation Council’s short animation video below shows you the steps you can take to save a life while reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission.
It includes amended steps to performing CPR, including not putting your ear or cheek close to the person’s face, placing a cloth or towel over the person’s mouth or nose before starting compressions, and doing chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth.
As we know, only one in ten victims survive. However, the chance of surviving a cardiac arrest jumps from 6% to 74% if the casualty is in a shockable rhythm and a defibrillator is deployed within 3 minutes. Therefore, it is important you know how to use one.
Defibrillators are very easy to use. Although they don’t all look the same, they all function in broadly the same way. The machine gives clear spoken instructions. You don’t need training to use one.
Watch our own Child Matters video where Claire demonstrates just how easy it is to use an AED defibrillator:
It’s a fact that CPR is different for babies and children in that they are more likely to need CPR because of a blocked airway rather than a cardiac arrest. They are also more likely to survive and benefit from immediate action. For this reason giving rescue breaths, rather than just hands on CPR is very important and no parent or grandparent would hesitate to do this for their own child despite the COVID-19 risk. Which highlights even more just how imperative it is to learn how to give CPR to your child, as a passer by might be concerned about infection risk.
Sources: Resuscitation Council (Resus.org.uk), *British Heart Foundation (bhf.org.uk), St John Ambulance videos
