Another case of SADS - RIP

[LeoMc]

New studies are showing that just doing chest compressions of at least 100 a minute will increase survivability.

This is now practice. I had my first aid refresher a few months ago and practice is harder and faster i.e. 2" compressions at 100 per minute. Defib is all well and good at a match but if you come on someone the most important thing you can do is ring for an ambulance.

Do you want to re-word that?

[Tony Baloney]

New studies are showing that just doing chest compressions of at least 100 a minute will increase survivability.

This is now practice. I had my first aid refresher a few months ago and practice is harder and faster i.e. 2" compressions at 100 per minute. Defib is all well and good at a match but if you discover someone having a heart attack the most important thing you can do is ring for an ambulance.

Do you want to re-word that?

Dirty hoor.

[Bud Wiser]

Regardless of whether Cormac got a viral thing there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the Cormac Trust have brought a lot of awareness to the benefits of having defibrilators at clubs and in other places as well as GAA clubs. Almost every week a life is saved with a defibrilator - and a bit of luck and by this I mean that a Dublin hurler was saved because there was an ambulance man sitting in the bar of the club and he ran out with the defib immediately. Last Sunday a defib was used to revive Gabriel Tumelty after he collapsed during a game between Longstone and Newry and a few weeks before that Chris McNeil was revived in Portstewart with a defib. In the case of the late Martin Mulholland paramedics treated him on the pitch for some time and then brought him to the changing rooms where he was treated with the defib.

In the case of the Dublin hurler, Seaghan Kearney, the batteries had not been charged since 2007 and he was revived with the one remaining charge. The GAA need to set up a Defibrillator Registry page on the internet where each case of a life saved is recorded and this would encourage other clubs to get them and teach plenty of people how to use them which is a very simple excercise.
Such a registry would describe the time taken to deploy the defib, if the defib was brought to the person in need of it as opposed to bringing the patient to the defib, if the batteries were charged etc. If mistakes are made we must learn from them and a registry describing how the life was saved would help but all anyone can do is do their best.

I know that in Laois if "the first thing you should do is ring for an ambulance" was to be invoked it would be the last thing you would do if you were the one needing it, or at least that was the case with my brother when one was called for him within 800 yards of the county hospital.