Increasing CPR Training to Save Lives
(NYTIMES.COM) Jane E. Brody, September 4, 2017 — In August, Jeffrey Feig, a 50-year-old financial executive in Manhattan and father of three young sons, became one of the more than 350,000 Americans who each year suffer a sudden cardiac arrest. His heart went into an erratic and ineffective rhythm and he stopped breathing.
But unlike 90 percent of people similarly afflicted, Mr. Feig not only lived to tell the tale but survived his near-death experience without any damage to his heart muscle or his brain, an outcome rarely seen following an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Mr. Feig owes his life and bright future to the forward thinking, planning and participation of fellow residents at Pine Lake Park, a bungalow colony in Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., where he and his family spend the summer. The moment he collapsed, fellow vacationers who had been trained at the colony in CPR and the use of an automated external defibrillator, or A.E.D., sprung into action.
One person called for an ambulance, another began chest compressions, a third provided mouth-to-mouth ventilation while a fourth ran into the social hall to get the defibrillator, which was used to shock his heart back to a normal, lifesaving rhythm. Just two weeks before this incident, the colony had conducted a training and refresher course in these lifesaving measures.