CNN Vital Signs shows how to rescue a cardiac arrest on land and in the air

Cardiopulmonary arrest or cardiac arrest is an emergency situation that can cause death within minutes. This week, the CNN Vital Signs shows how to rescue patients on land and in the air.

The rerun of the program presented by cardiologist Roberto Kalil will air this Wednesday (2), at 10:30 pm, right after the CNN newspaperin the prime range of CNN Brazil.

In this episode, Kalil and cardiologist Sérgio Timerman, one of Latin America’s leading experts in emergency and resuscitation, board a plane to demonstrate how a rescue is performed during a trip.

“You have to resolve this situation inside the plane. Between the person having a cardiac arrest, until they manage to get the plane to land, it won’t take less than fifteen to twenty minutes, if you’re really lucky, Timerman said (see the interview in the video above).

The two cardiologists have already helped passengers during plane trips. Kalil says that during a flight to New York he had to perform resuscitation maneuvers on a person who suffered cardiac arrest an hour after takeoff.

“We started resuscitation maneuvers and had to make an emergency landing. The passenger was removed from the plane, but it was a bad feeling because we are used to treating patients with the entire hospital structure”, recalled Kalil.

Timerman says he performed the same maneuvers on a flight attendant who suffered a sudden illness followed by hemorrhage during a flight to Sweden. “The plane was diverted, landed in Canada, and she got out of the plane alive,” she recalls.

But it’s not always that there are doctors on flights. Therefore, airlines have been better prepared for cases like these. There was the advent of emergency care and basic support on planes, with flight attendant training and the use of defibrillators on board, explains Timerman.

Metro station help

Kalil and Timerman also visited the São Paulo subway to show the preparation of the rescue team and discovered an important fact: the chance of surviving a cardiorespiratory arrest in the subway is 40%.

The percentage is much higher compared to those who are walking on the street, without proper care, for example. In the latter case, the chance of surviving cardiac arrest may be less than 1%. The difference is because subway teams are trained to save a patient in up to three minutes.

In these situations, the “R code” is activated. This is the communication code used by the metropolitan transport security sector, when there is such an occurrence in wagons or stations.

CNN Vital Signs will tell the story of Genival Batista, who suffered a cardiorespiratory arrest seconds after landing at a São Paulo station. Security cameras record the moment he feels sick and falls, until he is rescued.

(Posted by Lucas Rocha of CNN)

Source: CNN Brasil

You may also like