Have you witnessed a sudden cardiac arrest?
Read about some of the people I've met
As a health care journalist for 50 years, I never allowed myself to take advocacy positions in my professional or personal life. That would violate most journalistic ethical guidelines. But now that I’m retired, I have crossed over that line. One of my first volunteer efforts concerns sudden cardiac arrest in Minnesota, where I live. I covered many cardiovascular news stories in my career, won two Howard W. Blakeslee Awards in journalism from the American Heart Association (AHA), and worked for the AHA National Center in Dallas for 4 years in the early ‘80s. But I became a volunteer only recently after meeting two men who were clinically dead on pickleball courts - men I met after they were resuscitated and returned to longer life with their families. This experience moved me deeply. I led an effort to acquire an automated external defibrillator (AED) at my favorite outdoor pickleball court and have arranged for CPR & AED training for about 50 of my pickleball colleagues.
I would like to hear about any experiences you may have had with sudden cardiac arrest outside the hospital setting - in your friends or families.
The following op-ed that I wrote has been appearing in newspapers around Minnesota. (The hyperlinks and videos of the families’ stories have been added for your online reading benefit; they were not in the printed op-ed.)
Sudden. Cardiac. Arrest. It’s like a bolt of lightning out of the blue. The heart suddenly stops beating effectively. Blood flow to the body stops. If no immediate actions are taken to bring the heart back to normal rhythm, the person will die or at least have significant cognitive disability.
Minnesota SCA Advocates is a group established in 2024 with a mission of saving lives from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) by building a statewide collaboration of individuals and organizations dedicated to education, prevention and treatment of sudden cardiac arrest.
We have more than 40 members – many are parents of adolescents who had SCA. Some lost a son or daughter; others have a child who survived because of prompt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and the use of an automated external defibrillator (AED). Other members are adult SCA survivors and/or community advocates working in SCA education, CPR/AED training and AED placement.
You may remember well-publicized SCA events:
Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin and collegiate basketball player Bronny James, son of NBA star LeBron James, both had SCAs in 2023. Both were resuscitated and are back playing their beloved sports;
25 years ago, collegiate basketball star Hank Gathers of Loyola Marymount – one of the leading scorers in NCAA history - died of sudden cardiac arrest during a game.
The survival rate for SCA outside of a hospital is less than 10 percent but with planning, preparation and practice, the survival rate can increase significantly. Statistics are wide-ranging but at least a doubling or tripling of survival rates has been shown in various settings.
A registry recorded 6,851 sudden cardiac arrests in Minnesota in 2023-2024. In young people up to age 18 there were 207. (The American Heart Association estimates that more than 350,000 sudden cardiac arrests occur outside the hospital setting every year in the U.S.)
Among our member families, sudden cardiac arrest memories live on:
a 14-year old who died playing Eagan middle school hockey in 2014. Watch this video about his story:
an adult who survived cardiac arrest in downtown Minneapolis in 2008 because police on horseback were nearby;
a physician who survived cardiac arrest while at work in her hospital in 2008. Learn about her experience in this story.
a 14-year old died in the shower at his Burnsville home on Thanksgiving day, 2013. Read about his story.
a New Brighton man has carried an AED with him for 22 years after his cardiac arrest;
a 22-year old Cottage Grove man died during a pickup basketball game in 2022. An AED may have saved his life but none was available. Cottage Grove has since installed AEDs in its city parks. Read this family’s story here.
a 16-year old went into cardiac arrest during Wayzata high school football conditioning in 2009. Coaches performed CPR and used an AED to save his life. Watch this video about his story:
a 49-year old basketball referee went into cardiac arrest during a game in Fridley in 2007. A student trained in CPR and AED ran out of the stands and helped use CPR and an AED to resuscitate him. Here are details of his story.
A 3-month old girl saved by CPR that was started by her father and a bystander. Read their story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Our members have trained thousands of Minnesotans in CPR and AED use, and have raised money for AEDs in schools, parks and public buildings.
These are just a few of our stories. We would dearly love to report more resuscitations and more returns from being clinically dead to having long life with loved ones.
On March 13 we will be at the state capitol for Heart Lobby Day sponsored by the American Heart Association. We will support SF bill 1457 in the legislature, authored by State Senator Bonnie Westlin. The bill would require schools to develop a cardiac emergency response plan that includes CPR and AED training for a team of people and the availability of AEDs in each school. Schools are often the nuclei of our communities - gathering places. Many who have SCA in schools are adult volunteers, fans, coaches and others. If the bill passes, our members are prepared to assist schools to help implement its provisions. Project ADAM, with an affiliate led by Children’s Minnesota, helps schools develop cardiac emergency response plans. SF bill 1457 provides funding to help schools with these efforts; schools will not have to do this alone. Having a well prepared and practiced plan will help to save lives by empowering school staff, teachers, coaches, and others to respond quickly and appropriately when necessary.
I would like to hear from you about what has been done in your community to address sudden cardiac arrest. Do you know whether schools are mandated to have AEDs and to have cardiac emergency response plans? Have you been trained in CPR and AED use? Have you had to use those skills?
The challenge with a civilian performing CPR in a prehospital cardiac arrest is that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing (if that) and that it’s damn near impossible for anyone to be good at it. That said, even imperfect compressions can make a monumental difference once paramedics/EMTs arrive. Prolonged downtime without any compressions takes what little chance that patient has and sends it packing.