According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in the United States for both men and women. Each year, over 735,000 people have a heart attack in the United States.   Despite the numbers of heart attack victims being roughly equal between then genders, more women than men die every year from a heart attack and women are also more likely to suffer a second heart attack within five years of the first.   This is, in part, because the symptoms of a heart attack differ between men and women. In this..

Asthma is defined as an incurable chronic disease in which the lining of the bronchial tubes inflames and swells, causing difficulty breathing. It is extremely common in the US, with approximately 25 million people in the United States suffer from asthma, and 235 million all over the world.    Despite the number of people who suffer asthma attacks every year, about 1.7 million people go to the emergency room each year for asthma attacks, and more than 450,000 are hospitalized, many people don’t know exactly what to do to help a person suffering an asthma attack.    Thankfully, the fatality..

Before we go into why we need AED training; we need to explore what an AED device is.  AED is the abbreviation for Automated External Defibrillator. The AED is an important step in helping save a life. An AED is a machine that can be transported and utilized for the automatic diagnosis of life-endangering cardiac arrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia.     The AED was invented as the transportable version of the defibrillator in the middle 1960s by a Frank Pantridge of Belfast, Northern Ireland. When a person has been trained at using an AED it permits them..

Learning cardiopulmonary resuscitation is an excellent way to provide yourself with the skills needed to help in an emergency situation. 325,000 cases of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) are reported each year and if a trained individual is able to start performing CPR on an SCA victim immediately, the victim’s chances of survival increase by more than 40%.   Additionally, four out of every five heart attacks in the U.S. happen at home, meaning the person you are most likely to perform CPR on is someone important to you. While CPR courses, like the one we offer here at Northwest Community..

Saving lives is something that anyone can learn to do at any point, which is exactly why we here at Northwest offer free CPR classes to our students. However, for some, the act of saving a life becomes a calling, leading them to train as some of our most valued first responders, paramedics and emergency medical technician (EMT). If a career saving the lives of other appeals to you, here is a short guide to becoming a paramedic or EMT. Paramedic/EMT: What Is the Difference? The terms paramedic and EMT are used fairly interchangeably, but the reality is that they are tow..

There's that old familiar chill in the air, which can only mean one thing: It's officially the season of slips and spills, sniffles and sneezing! With snow and ice officially in the forecasts and a blizzard in Buffalo, New York, that buried them under around ten feet of snow, it's time to start thinking about how to prepare and inform ourselves so that we can stay safe throughout the cold winter months. With the ground getting icy and slick, falls, sprains, sore backsides, and broken-bone injuries increase dramatically during this time of year. Additionally, with the dip in temperatures, there..

Receiving training in CPR put you in the unenviable position that, while CPR certainly saves lives, you might be called upon to perform it, and it might not work. The reality is that, outside of the movies, CPR does not work every time. In fact, on its own CPR only works around 2% of the time, mostly because it is not designed to be used in isolation. So What Happens When it Doesn’t Work?   If you are trained in CPR then there is a very real possibility that you might be involved in something similar to the following example:..

Performing CPR on an infant is significantly more difficult than on an adult, requiring a much gentler approach and some fairly significant changes to the normal CPR procedure. The first, and most important, thing to do is to check if the infant is actually unresponsive. Accidentally performing CPR on an infant that doesn’t require it can be very dangerous. If they seem unresponsive, tap or flick the sole of their feet to try and trigger a response. If they do not respond, check for breathing by looking for chest movement, listening for the sounds of normal breathing and seeing if..

Until 2005, most guidelines for performing CPR recommended 15 compressions on the chest, followed by two breaths into the person’s mouth, followed by 15 compressions again. This sequence was then repeating until medical help arrived. In 2005, the American Heart Association (AHA) alongside many other CPR organizations, changed their recommendations to 30 compressions followed by two breaths.   Recently, research by Professor Gordon A Ewy and his team, conducted at the University of Arizona, indicated that that compressions alone were just as effective as compressions with breaths, as long as the compressions were perfromed correctly and in a timely manner...

Cardiac arrest is something that can strike at any time and sadly this includes during pregnancy. Pregnancy does put an extra strain on a woman’s body and this can sometimes, although rarely, trigger cardiac events.   Performing CPR on a pregnant woman can be challenging, but is very much possible. The primary goal of performing CPR on a pregnant woman is to stabilize the mother, as this normally results in the best case scenario for the child. Can Pregnancy Cause Cardiac Arrest? Because the circulatory system of the mother and baby are conjoined during pregnancy, there is an increased need..