Aug 27 2023 21:43 – Updated 27 Aug. 2023 21:43
Analyzes of around 1,700 cardiac arrest cases show that more than half had a warning – at least one symptom – the day before. Men and women had different signs.
When one has a sudden cardiac arrest and is not in a hospital, the mortality rate is over 90 percent, according to researchers at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai in California.
In the event of a cardiac arrest, blood circulation will suddenly decrease. The brain does not get oxygen, you lose consciousness and stop breathing, and it is precarious to get the heart going again as quickly as possible.
There is a need for improved methods to predict and prevent sudden cardiac arrest and thereby reduce mortality.
Now the researchers hope they are one step closer. In an article published in the medical journal The Lancet, they refer to analysis of data from two large surveys. They have used 1,700 cases of sudden cardiac arrest in which witnesses have described how the people appeared to be at the forefront.
The witness descriptions were recorded by called health personnel. The patients were aged 18 to 85 years and suffered a cardiac arrest between February 2015 and January 2021.
Half felt something
In around 50 per cent of the cases – in both surveys – there were warnings and symptoms in the hours, days or weeks before the cardiac arrest. For men, the most common warning was chest pain, but also breathing problems and extreme sweating. Women, on the other hand, more often experienced unexplained shortness of breath.
In addition, smaller groups of both sexes experienced palpitations, seizure-like activity and flu-like symptoms.
Doctor Sumeet Chugh from Cedars-Sinai led the study and hopes the findings will help people more quickly identify signs of cardiac arrest. Knowing the symptoms and differences between men and women can make it easier to understand that it is a sudden cardiac arrest.
– Our findings may lead to a new paradigm for the prevention of sudden cardiac death, says Dr Chugh.
High mortality
The data were obtained from two large, ongoing population studies in California and Oregon, the Ventura Prediction of Sudden Death in Multi-Ethnic Communities (PRESTO) and the Sudden Unexpected Death Study (SUDS).
In the United States, there are more than 356,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases. Over 90 percent do not survive.
In the SUDS survey, only 19 percent of those who knew symptoms in advance had called for help before collapsing.
2023-08-27 19:43:53
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