Sudden Death In Barbados Isn’t A Mystery
So you decided to do some business in and around Bridgetown on a wonderful bright sunny day in beautiful Barbados, a country I love, a tourist destination second to none.
You notice a large crowd gathering so you join this crowd and notice everyone just looking at someone one on the ground.
The crowd is building to over 100 people just looking and no one knows what to do except call 511 for help. Most of us will think it’s another sudden death victim, but that doesn’t have to be the case.
What Is Sudden Cardiac Death?
Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) is the sudden and unexpected death caused by the loss of heart functions.
Research says SCD is something that affects men about twice as much as their female counterparts. SCD is also responsible for half of all heart disease deaths.
Sudden death sometimes isn’t always so sudden. Chest pain, shortness of breath, and other common heart attack warning signs often precede sudden cardiac arrests.
Most sudden cardiac deaths are caused by abnormal heart rhythms called arrhythmias. The most common life-threatening arrhythmia is ventricular fibrillation, which is an erratic, disorganized firing of impulses from the ventricles (the heart’s lower chambers). When this occurs, the heart is unable to pump blood and death will occur within minutes, if left untreated.
Go and learn CPR so you can save my life.
Here Is What To Do
Go and take a Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) course from the Heart & Stroke Foundation, call them at 437-3312. It’s a one-day course that gives you the ability to hopefully save someone’s life. The joy of saving someone from death is something that will bring you the most satisfaction you will ever experience.
The CPR course is recognized worldwide and only costs $150 and after completion, you will earn a certificate; you might even land a job with this knowledge.
If you know of someone or somewhere one can learn CPR free or at a lower cost please let us know, the knowledge of CPR is too important.
I think the Ministry of Education should make CRP training mandatory in secondary schools. What do you think?
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Go And Save A Life
Don’t walk around Barbados clueless; become a super person; become that person everyone calls when in need of a life emergency, those people are also called HEROES.
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation has been a life saver for hundreds of years; started around 1740 by the French doing mouth-to-mouth for drownings at sea.
Sudden Cardiac Death Cure
CPR is not the deal-breaker for cardiac arrest or even a cure, but it might just be what that person needs until EMTs arrive. CPR keeps enough oxygen in the lungs and gets it to the brain until the normal heart rhythm is restored and normal again.
For patients who have a great risk for SCD, an Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) may be inserted as a preventive treatment. An ICD is a small machine similar to a pacemaker that is designed to correct arrhythmias. It detects and then corrects a fast heart rate.
The ICD constantly monitors the heart rhythm. When it detects a very fast, abnormal heart rhythm, it delivers energy (a small, but powerful shock) to the heart muscle to cause the heart to beat in a normal rhythm again. The ICD also records the data of each episode, which can be viewed by the doctor through a third part of the system that is kept at the hospital.
Am I at Risk Of Sudden Cardiac Death?
This can depend on many factors such as heart attacks, Coronary Artery Disease, Obesity and Diabetes. According to The International Diabetes Federation (IDF), there were 35,600 cases of diabetes in Barbados in 2017.
Visit your doctor for regular check-ups.
Let us bring the number of sudden deaths down.
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