February is American Heart month and it is right to shed light on the difference between heart attack and a cardiac arrest.
Heart attack is the leading cause of death in the United States and many other nations.
Reports have it that someone in America gets a heart attack every 20 seconds and it kills about 500,000 people a year.
To further break it down, it means about 57 people die in an hour and one almost every minute.
There is a difference between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrests are more dangerous than heart attacks.
“A heart attack or myocardial infarction is a blockage of your heart’s plumbing while cardiac arrest is an electrical problem with your heartbeat,” according to the Heart Rhythm Foundation.
Casinos are said to be one of the safest place to get a heart attack, according to New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Bryan Bledsoe, a former paramedic and emergency physician who teaches at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and writes textbooks for emergency caregivers said, “survival depends on how fast you’re defibrillated and receive chest compressions.”
He added: “If you get the first jolt within one minute, your chances are around 90 percent, but they drop 10 percent every sixty seconds.
“The odds of surviving a cardiac arrest in America is three to nine percent which is mostly dependent on the quality of the emergency response system.
“In communities with the best emergency response like Seattle, the salvage rate tops out at 16 percent. Put bluntly, even in the best cities in America, 85 to 95 percent of cardiac arrest victims simply don’t make it.”
Here is a list of African Americans who sadly died of a cardiac arrest.
