Cardiac Arrest – What to do and how to prevent?

By Dr Maneesh Rai

Mangaluru, Nov 21: Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) is the most unfortunate complication of a heart attack where in a normally beating heart comes to a complete stand still in seconds to a few minutes. Thankfully it is a very rare complication of a heart attack and occurs in less than 5% of all heart attacks. It is also important to realise that SCA can occur even in the absence of a heart attack.

The survival chances in the case of an unfortunate SCA is less than 10% even in most of the developed world. Restarting the ‘stopped’ heart within a minute will result in > 90% chance of survival. The chance of survival reduces 10% with every minute of delay, with very little chance of survival if the heart restarts after 10 minutes.

How to recognise a cardiac arrest and what sho