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Eden Prairie doctor saves life at gym, spreads heart health tips |
Eden Prairie doctor saves life at gym, spreads heart health tips
By Paul Groessel - Sun Newspapers
It happens to people you know.
For those attending a recent forum hosted by the Association of Minnesota Chinese Physicians, sudden cardiac arrest happened to someone they knew.
The association honored Dr. Hengbing Wang of Eden Prairie for saving a man's life June 11 at the Central Middle School gymnasium in Eden Prairie, and many of the forum attendees were there when it happened.
So, with a captive audience, members of the association and an assistant Eden Prairie fire chief honored Wang, demonstrated life-saving techniques and shared heart disease prevention tips during a forum Thursday, June 23, at the Eden Prairie Library.
The audience mostly consisted of parents of students who are part of the Huaxia Chinese School, which rents the middle school's gym space on Saturdays.
It was during a volleyball game that a man, who has not been identified for privacy reasons, collapsed during the game.
Wang was playing as well, and he saw the man fall. While someone called 911 and someone else ran to get the automated external defibrillator, Wang immediately gave the man a chest hit and administered CPR, he said.
"He had no pulse. Unresponsive. No spontaneous breathing," Wang said after the forum.
Those are the signs of sudden cardiac arrest, not a heart attack, which is usually caused by a blockage to the heart.
An AED treats dangerously overworking heart beats and sudden cardiac arrest.
That's what Wang did. He said he had to perform CPR for three minutes before the AED arrived, and then he used the AED, which got the man's pulse back.
The man was up a minute before the first responders arrived.
Had Wang and the AED not been in the gym, it could have been a different story.
An AED sends an electric charge to the heart, using two pads that are put on the victim's chest, on either side of the heart. The electric charge usually brings a dangerously over-working heart back to its natural rhythm.
Using an AED is simple; it does not require training, but it would be helpful, said association president Dr. Hongsheng Guo. The AED itself actually talks. It guides a user through the process with loud, short commands to get through a four-step process: Turn it on; attach the pads; wait; shock.
"You don't need training or anything," Guo said to forum attendees. "If you came here, you're qualified."
Assistant Eden Prairie Fire Chief Steve Koering said, as a first responder to many medical calls, the fire department doesn't deploy an AED for seniors only. They have had to use it on people of all ages, from children to senior citizens.
All city buildings, including schools, have an AED inside, and now the city is on a campaign to get them in area businesses, Koering said.
"You can't be afraid to grab it off the wall. Deploy it, and put it to use," he said.
Cardiac arrest usually follows ventricular tachycardia, VT, and ventricular fibrillation, VF, both conditions where the heart beats too fast for effective blood pumping.
These are "life threatening rhythm problems," Guo said.
They are so life threatening that VT and VF precede 90 percent of sudden cardiac arrest cases, Guo said. Every minute of SCA can decrease the chances of survival by 8-10 percent.
SCA is also a contributor to the leading cause of death in the United States, which is heart disease.
In 2007, heart disease killed 616,067 people in the United States, the leading cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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