The Defib Centre was set up in response to the appalling lack of public awareness about Sudden Cardiac Arrest in the U.K. We have brought together under one roof an online centre where anyone can find out the facts about Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA), and most importantly, what can be done about it. More than 150,000 people die of this condition every year in the U.K. Nearly 1000 of those will be young people and children. Many of these people have no previous history of heart disease. That is more than lung cancer, breast cancer and any other cancer you can think of combined- and yet, do you really know what Sudden Cardiac Arrest is? Most people only find out when it's too late and they have lost either their own life or that of someone they love and yet there is a treatment available that could dramatically change that.
When someone collapses with a cardiac arrest, for every minute that passes without an electric shock from a defibrillator, there is a 10% decrease in their chance of survival. That means after 10 minutes your chance of survival is practically nil. How long would it take the emergency services to reach your home/ workplace/ school?
Automated External Defibrillators or AED's can now be bought for the price of a laptop. They are foolproof and simple to use, and will not shock the patient unless the device can't detect a normal heart rhythm. If an AED is used within 5 minutes of a sudden cardiac arrest then 75,000 lives a year could be saved in the U.K. One of those could be you!
Whether it is just for you and your family, your workforce, your school or your community, at the Defib Centre we have all the information you need to make an educated decision as to which AED will best suit your needs.
We have kept our prices low, and a percentage of our profits is channelled back into charities concerned with sudden cardiac arrest. We are more than just a shop.
Please visit our website (http://www.thedefibcentre.co.uk/) and those of our chosen charities (http://www.c-r-y.org.uk/) and (http://www.heartrhythmcharity.org/) to see what we are trying to do. Only by raising awareness and providing earlier access to defibrillation will these shocking statistics be changed.
Thanks for reading this and please send us your story if you have been affected in any way by Sudden Cardiac Arrest.
Warmest wishes,
The Defib Centre
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I like what you say and find these useful questions to ask, for my own safety and out of interest.
ReplyDelete"Where is your nearest AED at work, at play, in the gym, at home or at school"?
Perhaps you could ask your employer, your dentist, your osteopath, your super-market, where their Aed is?
In some States in America you are never more than 2 minutes away from an AED automated external defibrillator. How fantastic is that? Where I live and work in the South East of England it would take the emergency services at least 20 minutes to reach me if I had a sudden cardiac arrest...................... by which time I would have been dead for 10 minutes.
The statistics are compelling. Over 2000 people die in the UK every week from a sudden cardiac arrest, 12 of those young people and this figure is probably under-reported. Many of those will not have any previous history of heart problems.
If an AED is used in the first 6 minutes after an attack the chance of survival goes up from less than 5% to around 65%. AED`s will not shock unless there is a `shockable` condition and are so simple to use that in one study a child with no previous experience of an AED took only 23 seconds longer than a trained paramedic to successfully set up and use one.
Please let me know how you get on! I have been thoroughly surprised and disappointed with the answers I have received.