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Ambulance service and lifesaving campaign hope to boost survivability rates from cardiac arrest


By Alan Hendry

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The Scottish Ambulance Service is working with schools to equip children with CPR skills. Picture: Fraser Band
The Scottish Ambulance Service is working with schools to equip children with CPR skills. Picture: Fraser Band

Efforts are being stepped up to ensure more people in Scotland know what to do if they witness someone suffering a cardiac arrest.

The Scottish Ambulance Service is working with the Save a Life for Scotland (SALFS) campaign in the hope of increasing survivability rates.

It comes amid heightened awareness of how cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillators can save lives, after Danish footballer Christian Eriksen suffered a cardiac arrest during a Euro 2020 match against Finland. He was given CPR and has been recovering in hospital.

There are crucial elements required to save a life when someone is in cardiac arrest, referred to as the "chain of survival".

The first of these steps is to ensure that people can identify when a cardiac arrest is happening, and there is a defibrillator in the community. This is followed by early CPR and defibrillation to restart the heart, timely hospital care, and appropriate aftercare.

Pauline Howie, chief executive of the Scottish Ambulance Service, said: “Working with the SALFS and other partners, we want to increase the survivability rates of those who go into cardiac arrest in Scotland.

"Cardiac arrest can affect anyone, of any age at any time or place. It is vital that we can encourage people to feel more comfortable in calling 999 and to deliver bystander CPR and defibrillation if witnessing an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

“Over the past five years, the SALFS partnership has equipped more than 640,000 people with CPR skills, and the survival rate after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest has doubled to one in 10 people. This is really significant progress, but there are even higher rates of survival achievable that we are working towards with the refreshed Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest Strategy.

"The Scottish Ambulance Service will also be working with schools so that we can equip all schoolchildren with the skills to be able to perform CPR.”

Dr Gareth Clegg from the University of Edinburgh, chairman of the delivery group for Scotland’s Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Strategy, said: “After a cardiac arrest every second counts. Calling 999 for help, starting chest compression CPR and using a defibrillator as soon as possible is the way to save lives.

"Scotland’s national plan to increase survival after cardiac arrest aims to double the number of cases where a defib is applied by the public – even before an ambulance arrives at the scene. Studies show that using a defibrillator within three minutes of collapse, along with starting CPR, can greatly increase chances of survival.”

SALFS director Lisa MacInnes said: “Every year around 3500 people in Scotland of all ages suffer a cardiac arrest at home or within the community. Save a Life for Scotland is a campaign that aims to increase the chance of survival by encouraging more people to learn about CPR and defibrillators.

"The simple message of the campaign is that everybody in Scotland has got the power to save lives in their own hands.”

There are around 4000 public-access defibrillators registered in Scotland.

Defibrillators are designed to be used by members of the public who have not received any training.

To find out more about CPR and defibrillators, visit the Scottish Ambulance Service website.

Visit savealife.scot to learn more about what organisations are doing across Scotland to save more lives.


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