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with heart

This year, make sure you have an AED in your workplace and train your team on how to use it.

I briefly wrote this column in mid-February. This month is often associated with heart-shaped candy boxes. However, February also marks American Heart Month, a month-long heart health and heart attack awareness campaign that encourages individuals, especially women, to focus on their cardiovascular health.

Why does it matter? Heart disease is the leading cause of death not only for men and women in the United States, but also for most racial groups in the United States. According to the CDC, 805,000 Americans have a heart attack each year, and 605,000 of these are first-time heart attacks.

Additionally, according to the American Heart Association (AHA), approximately 10,000 cardiac arrests occur in the workplace each year in the United States. And what would be the mortality rate for a heart attack victim if treatment was not provided until emergency responders arrived? According to OSHA, emergency medical system personnel waited to rescue the worker. In this case, the chance of survival is only 5-7%. If that’s not a sobering statistic, I don’t know what is.

The benefits of CPR training are clear. According to the AHA, if a bystander immediately applies CPR when a cardiac arrest occurs in a non-hospital location (such as a workplace), the victim’s chances of survival are twice or three times greater. there is. Survival. That’s a big boost.

But there’s another element to responding to a heart attack in the workplace: an automated external defibrillator (AED). The AED analyzes the victim’s heart rhythm for ventricular fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm that most often causes sudden cardiac arrest. The AED then delivers an electric shock to restore the victim’s heart rhythm to normal.

The combination of CPR and early use of an AED greatly increases a victim’s chances of survival in the event of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. For example, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology examined 13,769 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests that occurred from December 2005 to May 2007 and found that 38 percent of victims who received CPR and AED shocks from bystanders survived to the hospital. I discovered something. discharge.

AEDs should be a regular part of every workplace’s first aid preparation and emergency response. The devices are small and lightweight, and typically cost between $1,200 and $2,500 (list prices can reach $3,000 for some units). The cost of obtaining AED training is comparable to the cost of CPR training, and good sources for combined CPR and AED training include the AHA, American Red Cross, and local community centers and hospitals. They issue certifications upon completion.

Suffice it to say, if you want to spread some love during Heart Month, adding an AED to your workplace safety program is a great way to let your team know you care.

This article was originally published in the February/March 2024 issue of Occupational Safety and Health.

About the author


David Kopf is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Occupational Safety and Health magazine.





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