Cardiac arrest survival rate tops in Ottawa

If you're going to have a heart attack in Ontario, your chance of surviving such an occurrence outside of the hospital is best in Ottawa, says the city's top paramedic Anthony DiMonte. "We're over 12 per cent, we're more than double the Ontario average," said DiMonte during a presentation to city hall Thursday. "From being one of the worst communities to have a cardiac arrest in, you're now sitting in a community that's probably one of the best." Before the city began installing defibrillators in its public recreation centres, the chances of surviving a heart attack before paramedics arrived was just two per cent. But now there are more than 800 automated external defibrillators in the city

Hockey player in cardiac arrest revived with AED (Canada)

Ottawa paramedics are crediting a defibrillator for helping revive a hockey player who collapsed November 19 from cardiac arrest. They said the 41-year-old was playing at the Minto Arena in southeast Ottawa when he collapsed around 11:00 a.m. Bystanders, including an off-duty paramedic, started CPR immediately and shocked him three times with an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) to help him regain consciousness. Paramedics said the man was conscious and talking to them when they handed him over to hospital staff. Paramedics said they'd like to acknowledge the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario for providing this particular AED, one of more than 600 in Ottawa that paramedics oversee. They said the "chain of survival", which includes early CPR, early defibrillation and early notification of paramedics, drastically improves survival rates in people who suffer sudden cardiac arrest

Heart attack program expanded (Ottawa)

"Patients who have major heart attacks in outlying parts of Eastern Ontario now have a better chance at survival thanks to an expanded University of Ottawa Heart Institute program. Heralded as a pioneering model in North America, the STEMI program now includes 16 regional and community hospitals, giving patients from Deep River to Hawkesbury a better chance at surviving a serious heart attack. The newly expanded program builds on a 50% drop in death rates five years after the Heart Institute changed the treatment for major heart attack victims. Since 2004, patients with life-threatening heart attacks are transferred from Ottawa hospitals or by paramedics to the Heart Institute's angioplasty lab to get a balloon stent to open up a blocked artery. Under the STEMI program, paramedics can get patients to a catheter lab within 65 minutes, said Dr. Michel Le May, director of the coronary care unit at the Heart Institute. The fast track to state-of-the-art cardiac care is now expanded to a 200-km radius of the cardiac centre, with staff at smaller community hospitals trained with new standards and treatments for major heart attacks, said Le May" - Sun