Activities & Events 2007
February Meeting – St. Cloud, Minnesota
Sponsored by Take Heart America™
The February meeting of the Minnesota SCA Survivor Network was held at the St. Cloud Hospital in St. Cloud, Minnesota. We welcomed 11 new Survivors to our group, and 12 Survivors who are already members. The event included a tour of the hospital, a buffet lunch, and an educational session presented by Dr. Keith Lurie, an electrophysiologist and founder of Take Heart America™.
Take Heart America™ is a 3-city program designed to improve the overall survival rate from out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest from 5% to more than 30% in each city (St. Cloud, MN, Austin, TX, and Columbus, OH). The objective is to harness the synergy from simultaneous deployment of major innovations proven to improve survival from sudden cardiac arrest. These innovations include:
- Building community awareness of the SCA epidemic and ways citizens can help address this public health threat;
- Teaching CPR and defibrillator (AED) use to students and community members in a massive education effort using the AHA CPR Anytime – Friends and Family learning program;
- Public deployment of automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) enhanced by systems enabling 911 dispatchers to know the whereabouts of AEDs and to send nearby community responders with AEDs to SCA victims;
- Comprehensive professional rescuer implementation of newly recommended CPR techniques and deployment of devices that increase circulation during CPR; and
- Optimizing post-resuscitation care, including systemic hypothermia for unconscious survivors, aggressive treatment with percutaneous cardiac intervention for acute myocardial infarction, and insertion of implantable cardio-defibrillators (ICDs) in appropriate sudden cardiac arrest survivors.
Take Heart America™ is the first U.S. program to combine these innovations to improve SCA survival. Full implementation is expected in 2007. Outcomes will be tracked for two years and compared with historical controls and case-matched control cities. Achieving increased survival from sudden cardiac arrest will demonstrate the enormous potential associated with linking relatively simple technologies together in an interdisciplinary community health plan. This approach will then be available as a model for use by other communities nationally and internationally to increase survival from out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest.
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Copyright 2006 Minnesota SCA Survivor Network. All Rights Reserved.
The Minnesota SCA Survivor Network is a program of Olmsted Outreach
