World Heart Rhythm Week kicked off earlier this week. It is a global event aimed at raising awareness and promoting better understanding of heart rhythm disorder or arrhythmias.
Arrhythmia is a fault in the heart’s electrical system, which affects your heart’s pumping rhythm. The abnormal electrical activity makes the heart muscle beat too fast, too slow or in an irregular way.
To celebrate World Heart Rhythm Week, we're going to cover the symptoms of Arrhythmia to look out for, and what you can do to make sure you're prepared for a sudden cardiac arrest.
Arrhythmia Symptoms and Prevention
Symptoms may include a fluttering in the chest, chest pain, fainting or dizziness. Some patients do not feel arrhythmia, but present with other symptoms like heart failure or stroke.
"The best therapy to keep our hearts healthy is daily exercise. If everyone did an hour of exercise every day there would be a major reduction in patients having heart symptoms and presenting to hospital. This can be anything from walking, swimming, pilates or yoga. Regular exercise was recently proven to reduce the amount of arrhythmia equivalent to taking our strongest medication – an amazing fact." Dr Emily Kotschet at MonashHeart.
It's important to be prepared for SCA
Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) is when the heart rhythm becomes chaotic. It usually results from a disturbance in your heart that disrupts its pumping action, stopping the blood flow to your brain and the rest of your body.
It’s a medical emergency that if not treated immediately, will result in death within a few minutes.
CPR and early defibrillation are the answer.
CPR stands for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It is a lifesaving procedure that is given to someone who is unresponsive and not breathing normally.
It helps to pump blood around the person’s body when their heart can’t. In addition, it helps prevent brain damage and limits cardiac and vital organ damage, whilst significantly increasing the chance of survival. It also buys time when professional help is on its way.
70% of all bystander CPR is ineffectively performed and this includes both lay and trained rescuers. This is because the rescuer has no way to make clinical determinations as to whether their compressions are actually effective.
To make matters worse, there is a huge differential of force required from victim to victim depending on their build. We can’t impart all of this during training because it introduced complexity, and simplicity is the key.
Clinical feedback provided by a defibrillator during CPR is the solution.
The RD500 defibrillator takes clinical readings during CPR (as opposed to other AEDs that at best give feedback using superficial factors during CPR), and provides the rescuer with feedback based on cardiac output and other clinical factors. This is extremely important to give the rescuer confidence & reassurance.
FastAid Defibrillators available:
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RD500 (Our recommendation!)
- Semi-automatic defibrillator
- Features unique patient specific CPR feedback which instructs the user to push harder, faster, slower to reassure you that you’re doing it right.
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RD360
- Fully-automatic defibrillator.
- Provides audio prompts to users and metronome for CPR timing.
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RD350
- Semi-automatic
- Provides audio prompts to users and metronome for CPR timing.
Looking for more information on our defib and accessory range? View the full range of products here.
We also have a super helpful brochure about SCA and our defib range for you to view and download.
Need help choosing a defib? You can contact us or call 1800 13 12 11 to speak to our sales team!