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According to the American Heart Association, out-of-hospital cardiac arrest can affect more than 300,000 people in the United States each year. [5] Three minutes after the onset of cardiac arrest, a lack of blood flow starts to damage the brain, and 10 minutes after, the chances of survival are low. [6]
Digoxin: Helps slow the heart rate by blocking the number of electrical impulses that pass through the AV node into the lower heart chambers (ventricles). E lectrocardioversion: A procedure in which electric currents are used to reset the heart's rhythm back to regular pattern.
Return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) is the resumption of a sustained heart rhythm that perfuses the body after cardiac arrest. It is commonly associated with significant respiratory effort. Signs of return of spontaneous circulation include breathing, coughing, or movement and a palpable pulse or a measurable blood pressure.
Defibrillation [21] — Defibrillation is the definitive treatment step for those cases of cardiac arrest that involve a shockable rhythm, or one correctable by defibrillation (pulseless unstable ventricular tachycardia, coarse or fine ventricular fibrillation; it will not work for asystole or pulseless electrical activity)
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure consisting of chest compressions often combined with artificial ventilation, or mouth-to-mouth in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who is in cardiac arrest.
Without special treatment after circulation is restarted, full recovery of the brain after more than 3 minutes of clinical death at normal body temperature is rare. [6] [7] Usually brain damage or later brain death results after longer intervals of clinical death even if the heart is restarted and blood circulation is successfully restored ...
The American Heart Association highlights the most important steps of BLS in a "five-link chain of survival." [ 11 ] The chain of survival includes early recognition of an ongoing emergency, early initiation of CPR by a bystander, early use of a defibrillator, and early advanced life support once more qualified medical help arrives.
After the brain, the heart is the second most sensitive organ to ischemia. [4] If the cause of the cardiac arrest was fundamentally a coronary pathology, then the consequences to the heart may include myocardial infarction complications. However, if the fundamental cause was non-coronary, then the heart becomes ischemic as a consequence, not a ...