Cardiac Arrest: CellAED improves chances for Aussie patients

It was an average shift in 2021 when he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest.

But the Melbourne council worker didn't realise he would have some unexpected luck on an otherwise dreadful day.

He would be one of the fortunate patients to survive an out of hospital cardiac arrest with the help of fast-acting first responders and paramedics.

There were almost no warning signs he was about to have a major medical incident. He wasn't short of breath or experiencing chest pains and he didn't feel sweaty or clammy.

"I had the traffic stopped. I got dizzy and the dizziness didn't go away," he said.

"I just remember walking over, leaning against the sign. One of the guys came over to me and asked 'are you ok?' I said 'I don't know'."

He didn't realise, while stopping traffic for the roadworks, that an off-duty critical care nurse was first in the queue.

"As I was sitting there listening to the radio and waiting for my turn I noticed a group of men. One of them slowly collapsed to his knees and fell to the ground," nurse Hélène Kelly said.

"I veered onto the side of the road, one of my wheels on the footpath, I jumped out of the car and ran to the incident.

"He wasn't breathing and I knew right away that he wasn't in good shape."

Cardiac arrest kills an average of 55 Australians each day but only 10 per cent of people know how to respond to these emergencies.

A first responder, who immediately begins CPR, can be the difference between life and death in many cases.

In Victoria patients suffering an out of hospital cardiac arrest have a 50 per cent chance of surviving the episode if they are resuscitated by an ambulance worker.

That figure jumps to 57 per cent if a first responder is on the scene to give CPR.

This is because every minute counts for the heart, brain and other organs.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Members of the Australian Resuscitation Council met at Melbourne's Parkroyal Hotel in September to discuss the future of CPR in regional, rural and remote areas.

New technologies being rolled out across the country are improving survival rates.

Australian-made CellAED handheld defibrillators are being installed in public places where cardiac arrests are common including in churches, shopping districts and suburban cul-de-sacs.

An electric shock from a public automated external defibrillator (AED) raises a patient's chance of surviving a cardiac arrest to 65 per cent.

And a whopping 50 per cent of these patients were discharged from hospital alive compared to 27 per cent for people resuscitated by an ambulance worker.

Stephen and his family were among the crowd at Melbourne's resuscitation conference in September.

For the first time since the fateful day in 2021, Ms Kelly and the team of paramedics were reunited with the man they saved.

The responders have a "personal bond" with the survivor, Ms Kelly said.

"I've touched his life and his wife's - he continued living," she said.

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