When faced with cardiac arrest, begin CPR immediately . Because every second counts, administer CPR even while another person gets a defibrillator or calls 911. A person suffering ventricular fibrillation has only about five minutes before brain damage occurs. Successful CPR has been performed for up to two hours before advanced care has arrived. Everyone should know CPR, including children eight years and older.
Ventricular arrhythmia is an irregular, deadly heartbeat.
Portable defibrillators are so easy to operate that even 6th graders can use them quickly and accurately, researchers report. However, few studies examined what might happen if defibrillators were more widely available outside a medical setting. Researchers recently installed the devices in airplanes and, as part of another study, in casinos. In the casino study, Terence D.Valenzuela, MD, of the University of Arizona, Tucson, and colleagues provided five to six hours of defibrillator training to more than 1,350 security officers from casinos in Nevada and Mississippi. Casino operators installed enough defibrillators to enable their use within three minutes of a guest needing it.