When Michael Jackson – among the most famous personalities on the planet – died from a suspected cardiac arrest this week, the world got a “sudden cardiac arrest” wake up call.

Yahoo! headline “Jackson’s Death Puts Spotlight on Sudden Cardiac Arrest” said it best. Michael’s high-profile death may help build awareness about sudden cardiac arrest, which, despite killing more than 300,000 in the U.S. alone every year (more than 1 million worldwide), is not widely known or understood.

Dr. Bruce Lindsay, a past president of the Heart Rhythm Society and director of cardiac electrophysiology at the Cleveland Clinic is quoted. Sudden cardiac arrest “is actually the most common cause of death in the United States,” Dr. Lindsay says.

Michael Jackson's death sent Internet users scrambling for information about sudden cardiac arrest

HealthDay reporter Ed Edelson writes, “Pop star Michael Jackson probably did not die on Thursday of a heart attack but perhaps something even more deadly – sudden cardiac arrest, experts say.” (Celebrity pitchman Billy Mays had cardiac arrest days later.)

Twitter broke the news and "cardiac arrest" was a trending topic that day (click to enlarge)

He explains, “In sudden cardiac arrest, the heart simply stops beating, and the ventricles, the two blood-pumping chambers at the bottom of the heart, go into fibrillation, a useless fluttering. When that happens, survival time is measured in minutes.”

Six minutes away
Mr. Jackson was a six-minute drive from the UCLA Medical Center. That means, without defibrillation, the chances for his survival were relatively low.

The usual estimate is that the chance of survival goes down 10 percent for every minute that the heart stops beating. Using American Heart Association estimates, Jackson’s chances for resuscitation were reduced to 40 percent by the time the ambulance arrived – if the ambulance was called immediately.

This is why having accessible defibrillation is so important. Automated external defibrillators, portable devices the size of a laptop, are relatively inexpensive.

Ideally, there should be a defibrillator wherever two or more people meet. Is your workplace protected? Your child’s school and sports team? Your church/synagogue/place of worship?

If not, what are you waiting for? Contact us today to get your own defibrillator or click here to learn the difference between a heart attack vs a sudden cardiac arrest.

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