At a session at this year’s Euroanaesthesia in Stockholm, it was argued that improving the skills of members of the public, including schoolchildren, in resuscitation following cardiac arrest could save up to 100,000 lives per year.
The best estimates currently available suggest that 350,000 deaths in each year in Europe are due to so called ‘out-of-hospital cardiac arrest’ (OOH-CA).
Presenter, Professor Böttiger and other experts in resuscitation believe around 100,000 of these deaths could be prevented if members of the public, beginning with schoolchildren, are educated better on how to resuscitate a person who has had OOH-CA.
He said: “350,000 deaths from OOH-CA per year is around 1000 deaths per day, the equivalent to 2 large full jumbo jets crashing per day, every day through the whole year, with no survivors. If that was happening, wouldn’t we be doing all we could to stop it?”
For education of schoolchildren, the ERC says that children of 12 years and older can be shown resuscitation techniques using just 2 hours per school year.