THIRTY defibrillators are set to be installed across the island’s public places in an effort to cut the number of deaths from sudden heart attacks.
According to Health Minister Charis Charalambous, the devices will be on site in various places where crowds gather, such as airports, ports and sports stadiums, within the month.
“This is simply the first step and we hope to install as many as possible in the near future,” the Minister stated. “It is my hope that private enterprise will follow our lead as the more we have, the better.”
The cost of the devices has not been revealed.
Spokesman of the Cyprus Society for Resuscitation, Marios Georgiou, said that sudden death by heart attack is one of the biggest health problems faced by society on the island.
Citing statistics, he said more than 90 lives could be saved every year “with the prompt and effective use of defibrillators.”
He added that only five to ten per cent of victims survive. “Even though the average age is 65, it is not uncommon to hear of tragic cases involving the young, with even athletes affected.”
One such case occurred on Friday night when a 22-year-old suddenly died from a heart attack while dancing with his fianc?e during their engagement party in Aradhippou.
According to Georgiou, a critical factor affecting the survival rate in such cases is the speed with which treatment with a defibrillator is administered. Every minute lost is said to reduce the chances of survival by ten per cent.
According to the latest information provided by the Statistical Services, there were 2,103 deaths on the island in 2005 caused by diseases of the circulatory system, including sudden heart attacks.
Online encyclopaedia Wikipedia says “defibrillation is the definitive treatment for life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias”.
“Defibrillation consists of delivering a therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the affected heart with a device called a defibrillator. This depolarises a critical mass of the heart muscle, terminates the arrhythmia, and allows normal sinus rhythm to be re-established by the body’s natural pacemaker, in the sinoatrial node of the heart.”
Defibrillators can be external, transvenous, or implanted, depending on the type of device used. Some external units, known as automated external defibrillators, automate the diagnosis of treatable rhythms, meaning that lay responders or bystanders are able to use them successfully with little or no training.
Technology that saves lives
DEFIBRILLATION was first demonstrated in 1899 by Prevost and Batelli, two physiologists from the University of Geneva. They discovered that small electric shocks could induce ventricular fibrillation in dogs, and that larger charges would reverse the condition.
The first use on a human was by Claude Beck, professor of surgery at Western Reserve University. Beck’s theory was that ventricular fibrillation often occurred in hearts which were fundamentally healthy, in his terms, a “heart too good to die”, and that there must be a way of saving them.
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