A Local Cardiac specialist wants to teach every child in Leicester and Leicestershire how to resuscitate a heart attack victim and use an automatic defibrillator.
Dr Doug Skehan a consultant cardiologist at Leicester’s Glenfield Hospital is leading the project which will see an automatic defibrillator put into every secondary school to use when someone suffers a cardiac arrest.
“we have identified that in the UK we do have a good result in resuscitating people who are having a cardiac arrest out side of hospital, we can do better, but we will only do better by taking this message to the public” says Dr Skehan.
Cardiac arrest is most common in older people, but it can also happen to young people due to unrecognised inheritable heart conditions. Whatever the age though death is imminent unless resuscitation takes place within minutes. There are over 30,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests in the UK each year and 27,000 do not survive.
The event yesterday which took place at the Leicester Tigers ground was a collaboration between local charities, the east Midlands Pacemaker Fund and the Joe Humphries Memorial Trust as well as University hospitals of Leicester, British Heart Foundation and the East Midlands Ambulance service.
