Cardiac Arrest

Automated external defibrillators, which allow a layman to shock a person back to life after a heart attack, can nearly double the chances of survival for heart attacks suffered in airports, casinos and other places where there are bystanders able to help. But in hospitals, it's a different story, researchers said Monday. There, the devices — which have become widely used in recent years — not only provide little benefit but actually increase the risk of patients dying, a team of investigators reported at a Chicago meeting of the American Heart Assn.

Former White House Press Secretary James S. Brady--who gave his name to the nation's anti-gun crusade after he struggled to recover from devastating wounds inflicted during the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan--was taken Tuesday morning to the emergency room of a suburban Washington hospital after suffering cardiac arrest while receiving dental treatment.

Raising troubling questions about health care for African-Americans, researchers report today that blacks are significantly more likely to suffer and die from sudden heart failure than whites, and that whites who are found to have heart disease are far more likely to undergo surgery to correct it than blacks.

The Seahawks were about to kick off at the Kingdome in Seattle when a fan clutched his chest and fell to the ground. As the football tumbled through the air, a group of fans turned their backs on the play and rushed to the stricken man. As one rescuer began pumping his chest, others lined up to take over. "They were standing around, saying, 'It's my turn now, it's my turn,' " recalls Dr.

A building inspector who was wedged into a 66-foot shaft for nearly four hours at a Valencia construction site earlier this week has died. Jaime Lozoya, 32, of Downey died at 7:15 p.m. Thursday at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, where he had been in critical condition since the accident two days earlier. Details of his injuries have not been released, at the request of his family, but Lozoya went into cardiac arrest as he was pulled out of the hole by rescuers and had to be revived.

A few hours before a wary Landon Donovan ran onto the practice field at the Home Depot Center on Thursday, a funeral took place in Bergamo, Italy. And those two events may have more in common than you think. Piermario Morosini, a 25-year-old midfielder for Livorno in Italy's Serie B, collapsed and died of cardiac arrest in the first half of his team's match last weekend. He was laid to rest Thursday, with thousands of fans packing the streets of his hometown as his coffin, draped in numerous jerseys passed.

Bryan Stow, the Bay Area paramedic severely beaten at Dodger Stadium, was attacked after he used medical slang to express disgust with local fans taunting his group of San Francisco Giants supporters, according to testimony Wednesday. A friend and fellow paramedic quoted Stow as saying "I hope they code" - shorthand for suffering cardiac arrest - of Dodger fans profanely jeering him and three friends as they left the Opening Day game last year. "His voice was raised, but he wasn't looking at anyone or directing it at anyone," recalled witness Corey Maciel.

My husband left me. He didn't mean to, but he did. The day before my son's birthday, he was just gone. Lying on the couch, he looked like he was crying, and foam was coming out of his mouth. I thought he was having a seizure. I wasn't sure. I panicked. But I am a volunteer trained to react in an emergency, and having my husband not respond to me caused a switch to throw. I did the chest rub, I called 911. I threw him onto the floor of the living room. I did CPR as hard and as fast as I could.

Whenever he threw a baseball into the stands, Angels outfielder Vernon Wells said he tried to place it beyond the front row so it wouldn't fall back onto the field. Now major leaguers are confronted with more grave fears than whether play will be disrupted. A fan trying to catch a ball tossed by Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton fell over a railing and plunged 20 feet to his death Thursday at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, raising concerns about stadium safety regulations and the time-honored tradition of throwing balls to fans.

If your heart stops and you fall to the ground, your chances of survival may depend on which neighborhood you're in when you collapse. Patients suffering cardiac arrest in poorer, predominantly black neighborhoods were half as likely to receive CPR from a bystander as those in richer, predominantly white neighborhoods, according to research published in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. Even cardiac arrest victims in well-to-do black neighborhoods were 23% less likely to receive bystander assistance.