CHARLESTON, W.Va. — When somebody is stricken with a heart attack, their chances of survival increase exponentially when somebody nearby knows how to perform CPR.
“The numbers show, outside of a hospital if you go into cardiac arrest, the survival rate is about 11 percent,” said Kevin Pauley with the American Heart Association.
The Heart Association wants to increase that percentage as much as they can, but it can be a tough task in West Virginia according to Pauley.
“In certain territories it can take EMS anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes to reach somebody,” he said. “If you’re not getting any kind of CPR help, you’ve got about a 50/50 chance of pulling it out.”
The problem is blamed on fewer people knowing CPR in rural parts of the state. Volunteers from around the state were part of the Heart Association’s training event in Charleston last week. Those who attended were taught CPR, but the bigger reach was they were trained and equipped with how to pass the knowledge along to others.
“They are going to take this information and special kits back to their communities and train other people,” said Pauley. “It’s sort of a snowball effect, a very positive one, of more and more people out there in our state knowing how to do CPR.”
Even if you’ve taken a CPR course in the past, Pauley recommended renewing that card every few years to learn what changes may have been made to the best practices.
“The biggest push right now is hands on CPR,” he said. “Science has shown the most important part of CPR is the compressions and we know some people are gunshy about the mouth-to-mouth par of it,. Hands only CPR is just as effective and it’s a great way to save a life.”