Saturday, 10 November 2012

Sudden Death

On 17th March 2012 something happened on British television. On this fateful day a premiership footballer and a fine gentleman called Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the football field.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0XN1d6s2oU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=Xw9Wh9aY8kA&feature=endscreen



 He was successfully resuscitated and has since walked out of hospital with an implantable defibrillator. This was a moment of great achievement for the entire medical/paramedical/scientific community. We did not reach here easily. So lets go back and look at how we reached here. Now let us look at the various factors which have contributed to the successful resuscitation of Muamba.

1-Emergency Medical Services



They are truly the unsung heroes of innumerable lives saved in UK and worldwide. These are the angels that provide immediate assistance on the field, in your home and on the street. If you would like to know more about EMS please have a look at the following links.

http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/explore-by-career/ambulance-service-team/careers-in-the-ambulance-service-team/paramedic/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_medical_services

http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/view-article.html?id=819

http://www.basics.org.uk/

2-Advanced life support

Guidelines on how to administer resuscitation were first brought out by the American Heart Association in 1974 and have subsequently been revised many times. What is probably more important for successful resuscitation is Basic Life Support. Successful vaccination against a particular virus is dependent on crowd immunity- that magical critical percentage of the population who have been vaccinated. Similarly successful resuscitation will be directly proportional to crowd BLSability(once again an unknown magical percentage of members of public who can provide BLS).



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_life_support

http://www.resus.org.uk/siteindx.htm

http://www.resus.org.uk/pages/bls.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpQqqZJIptM

3-Definitive treatment

Obviously this will depend on the diagnosis. There has been a lot of interest in sudden death among young adults. Fabrice Muamba has been a great catalyst in speeding up the minds of various people to tackle this largely preventable problem.



http://www.c-r-y.org.uk/index.htm?gclid=CLvo9PSwxrMCFbMbtAodUBYAkw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unexpected_death_syndrome

http://www.sads.org.uk/

http://www.bhf.org.uk/research/research-milestones/sads.aspx

This blog post is not meant to be an encyclopaedia of knowledge nor is it meant as a replacement of traditional sources of information and advice like your textbooks, journals and healthcare professionals. This is just a little stimulant for further reading for everyone including me. I would like to thank all my colleagues who have helped me gather information and have been a source of inspiration to write this article. I dedicate this article to the innumerable young adults who die worldwide just because of lack of simple basic life support, absence of an organised EMS and apathy among the people who run health services.






Sunday, 9 September 2012

Welcome to this blog

Hi everyone

I have started this blog to put together all the things I have learnt over the last 10years in emergency medicine     and would like to welcome anybody else who wants to add some content onto this blog. I thought I shall start off with the mother of all emergencies we face in the emergency department-a sudden death in an young adult. I am not talking about the standby call for an 86yr old from a nursing home. I am talking about a relatively healthy adult who suddenly drops down dead! Most of you would agree that this is a nightmarish situation for all involved. I wanted to look into the issue from as many angles as possible but start of with a few important questions in mind.

1-what do we already know about sudden death in young adults ?

2-how common a problem is this ?

3-What can we do-as a bystander; as a paramedic; as an emergency physician ?

4-what is the future ?

5-what are perspectives and issues in resource poor countries ?

Let us take one small bite at this topic a day over the next few days.

Please feel free to share your views/experiences.