October is Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness Month

a deep dive into another topic. It's a serious health topic. So it's Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness Month. So we're bringing in Dr. Ankur Doshi. He is joining us today. So, I mean, talk to us, doctor, a little bit about the importance of this Awareness Month. Yeah, thanks so much, Greg. Cardiac arrest is a disease that about 356,000 Americans have a year, so 1,000 a day. And it means that someone's heart stopped. And when their heart stopped, they have a lot of problems, obviously, and need CPR. And Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness Month is a real important month because we're using this month to try to promote lay people to do CPR. Because if we wait for the paramedics, it's just too long. Okay. Yeah, that's extremely important. Doc, I mean, you know, a lot of times I feel like, you know, sometimes we can forget about making sure that we're checking on our heart and checking on, you know, checking on our heart and whatnot. I mean, if you could talk about kind of the importance of the things that we should be doing, you know, especially with this cardiac arrest awareness month, what we should be doing to protect ourselves. Yeah, that's a great question. Obviously, you should see your doctor and, you know, get your health checkups. But some of these things are things you just don't expect. People can have sudden cardiac death. And actually, by the name of the word it's sudden and it's unpredictable so really the prevention for that after being healthy and you know working with your doctor is for the people around you to know CPR which is the life-saving skill that will keep somebody from having a bad outcome because CPR by lay people triple survival from cardiac arrest so the number one thing people need to know is actually how to do CPR and to be willing to do it wow and i mean i i would imagine there's a lot of folks out there that that don't know how to do CPR yeah unfortunately in the United States only about a third of people who have had an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest so a cardiac arrest you know not in a hospital setting get CPR from a lay person uh and what we know is that the survival for those people is only about 10%, only about 10% of those people go home one in 10 but if a lay person does CPR, we can double or triple survival. So we're really doing a push this month through the Southern Cardiac Arrest Foundation to try to train 20,000 people in CPR this month. And we have events going all over the country, including in Philadelphia. And if you don't mind talking about, you know, what you guys do over in Philadelphia, the event that you're going to do, what, with the training, what goes into it? What should people be prepared for that they're going to have to, you know, do in order to, you know, be a part of the CPR training? Yeah, that's a great question. What we're trying to do this month with the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation is public trainings all over the country. So there are four trainings happening in Philadelphia. They're actually led by a cardiac arrest survivor and his family. And really all you need to know how to do is to go to that and learn three steps. Okay. The first step is to call 911 if someone needs help, right? 911 will help you. They're going to be able to talk to you on the phone and get you through it. The second thing you need to do is to push hard and fast on their chest uh we know that's the life-saving skill it is hard scary it is uh intimidating but it's not really that hard so all you need to do is get your hands do cpr and then the third thing is if someone else comes to help you out have them find the most uh close AED and give those persons a shock so we give three words you just need to remember call call 9-1-1 push hard and fast push and then shock use the AED what last thing i'll ask you is i mean essentially what is your target audience for like you know training are you looking for people that are like 18 and up because i would imagine learning something like this it's better to learn it you know as early as possible in age yeah so we're doing 171 events all over the country this month and we have certain ones that are for school children certain ones that are for the career, older adults and anyone in between. Really after someone's about fourth or fifth grade, so about 10 or 11 years old, they can learn the skills for CPR. And we can do even people who are elders who, you know, older adults in their 80s and 90s can do CPR. So really anyone can come learn. If you come to any of these events in Philadelphia, we'll train you and you'll learn, get out of there learning CPR and knowing how to do it to help some sick peer neighbors or your loved one's life. Great information. Doctor, is there anything else that you would want to mention to our audience that I didn't ask? No. Again, please, what we're trying to do is really empower people to help themselves. Call 911, but it takes time for them to come. Those minutes that it takes 911 to come are the most critical minutes. So if you call 911, jump into action, do CPR, do the best you can. You really can't hurt anybody who needs CPR because if they're unconscious and their heart isn't beating, anything is better than nothing. So you can't do it wrong. And what you do is you can't get in trouble. You're covered under the Good Samaritan Law in the Commonwealth and all over the country. So if you do your best, you won't get in trouble. All you can do is help someone. I say all you can do is be a superhero. All right. Doctor, thank you very much for joining us. Truly appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks so much.