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How to treat a heart attack

By Mark Cox
September 23, 2010 at 9:30 am

Telly people are so imaginative.

Given a rather dry brief to make a short news piece about heart attacks recently, one enterprising crew worried it might lack impact. So they did what any self-respecting production team would do – threw the cardiologist who was presenting the piece knee-deep into a stinking London sewer.

The idea behind this wheeze, of course, was to draw a parallel between the blocked, effluent-filled sewer tunnel (in which our eminent consultant finds himself perilously close to heaving) and the blocked arteries of an unhealthy body. See what they did there? Genius.

By the end – lest the point has hitherto been too subtly made – they show the good doctor literally shovelling ordure as he extols the benefits of an unbunged system and a healthy diet.

But underneath the quirky presentation-style lies a very serious point. Heart attacks claim too many lives every year in the UK – on average 86,000 a year die from cardiac arrest – and getting swift medical attention for casualties is crucial.

The symptoms – including lips turning blue, profuse sweating and extreme gasping for air – are fairly easy to spot. And here’s what you should do next:

1. Sit the person down.

2. Call an ambulance immediately, even if you are not sure about the symptoms.

3. If the person is conscious, give them a 300 mg tablet of aspirin to chew.

The main risk in this situation is that the heart will stop beating, so be prepared to resuscitate if necessary.

Our cardiologist friend did make me chuckle – and he may have been picking bits of toilet paper from between his toes for days afterwards – but he was talking about a  issue that cuts way too many lives short and brings terrible sorrow to thousands of families each year.

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Tags: cpr, emergency response, first aid tips, first aid training, heart attack

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under First aid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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