English: CPR training (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, claiming the lives of about 600,000 people and accounting for 1 in every 4 fatalities annually. Sufferers of heart disease are more prone to cardiac arrest, and about 47 percent of sudden cardiac deaths occur outside a hospital. A new app alerts its users whenever someone’s heart has stopped beating. The hope is that good Samaritans will perform CPR, in many cases sooner than emergency responders arrive, ensuring the brain continues to receive oxygen and preventing death.
Using the PulsePoint Respond mobile app, an emergency dispatch system alerts CPR-trained bystanders and off-duty professionals when people near them suffer a Sudden Cardiac Arrest event and where to find the closest automated external defibrillator (AED).
Already connected to 650 emergency response systems, PulsePoint will now be available to Los Angeles residents. In a county where it takes 5 minutes on average for emergency crews to respond-and even longer in remote communities like Lancaster and Palmdale-having citizens help each other sooner could prove crucial to improving the chances of those suffering a Sudden Cardiac Arrest event of survival with a good quality of life, which diminishes after about 3 or 4 minutes.
So far, about 13,000 people, primarily first responders and their friends and families, have downloaded the app, reported the Los Angeles Times. Hopefully, as the fire department continues to notify the public of the app’s existence, more and more people will prepare themselves to save lives by becoming users.
What do you think? Will you download the PulsePoint Respond app?
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