CPR AED | NCAA reminding trainers, coaches to use cardiac arrest checklist

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CPR AED NCAA reminding trainers, coaches
to use cardiac arrest checklist
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Summer school classrooms are humming with
activity on college campuses across the nation
and soon, so will sports fields full of student
athletes returning for training camps and
practices. But before they do, the National
Collegiate Athletic Associations top medical
chief is reminding head athletic trainers and
team physicians about a rare, but important
concern of theirs sudden cardiac death. In a
memo, Brian Hainline, M.D., provides a reminder
of significant recommendations the NCAA made this
spring about pre-participation health screenings
for athletes and the need to bolster emergency
response plans to ensure quick and potentially
lifesaving responses to students who experience
sudden cardiac arrest.
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The condition contributes to between five and 10
deaths in NCAA athletes every year. According to
the most recent statistics from the American
Heart Association, about 88 percent of cardiac
arrest cases that happen outside of a hospital
result in death. The primary goal as college
teams prepare for the upcoming sports season is
to get everyone focused on cardiovascular care
during pre-participation exams, Hainline said.
That means for most institutions, nothing
radical is going to change, because they already
assess an athletes personal and family
cardiovascular history and adhere to a 14-point
evaluation recommended by the American Heart
Association. But Hainline said the NCAA wants a
heightened consciousness to ensure
well-rehearsed emergency protocols are in place
should an athlete go into cardiac arrest,
regardless of the scenario.
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Theres a big difference between treating sudden
cardiac arrest during football or basketball
practice when there are only a handful of people
around, versus a basketball game with 20,000
people, or a football game with 90,000 people,
and the access points arent easy to get to, he
said. The Journal of American College of
Cardiology released the NCAA recommendations in
April as part of a consensus statement, the
result of work conducted over the past two years
by a task force of cardiovascular and sports
medicine experts, trainers and others with
interests in college athletics. The task force
also included medical associations, including the
AHA, which applauded the NCAA for convening the
task force and assuming a stronger leadership
role in fulfilling its mission, which among other
things, is to safeguard the health and wellbeing
of student athletes, said AHAs chief medical
officer for prevention, Eduardo Sanchez, M.D.
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This was about stepping up and saying, lets
bring key folks together and figure out if there
are some things we can be doing better, he said.
Im not suggesting anything was done improperly,
but in the world of quality improvements, when
you bring around a bunch of physicians and health
professionals and researchers, it is all about
how do you move the needle and get even
better. The NCAA in its recommendations also
emphasized increased awareness about signs of
cardiac arrest and training among coaching staff
in administering CPR and using AEDs, or automatic
external defibrillators. This awareness and
training creates a culture of action that
prepares and motivates bystanders to respond
immediately upon witnessing a cardiac arrest,
according to the consensus statement. However,
routine, widespread use of electrocardiograms was
not listed among the recommendations, although
the NCAA did provide specific guidance to schools
already using them.
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Hainline noted that sports cardiology is highly
specialized and a relatively new field, making it
difficult for many schools, particularly the
smaller ones, to find doctors who have the
expertise and experience to accurately interpret
ECGs in student athletes. The knowledge base is
a heck of a lot better than it was three years
ago, but its still not good enough, he
said. However, the NCAA task force did recommend
establishing regional referral centers where
cardiology oversight and experts can help
interpret ECGs, particularly those with
questionable results, and provide guidance on the
heart health of student athletes. Sanchez said it
may be too early to see what kind of influence
that the recommendations will have on athletes.
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But on the other hand, it does have an impact
because now theres something out there. Theres
a blueprint. Theres a benchmarking document
against which we can say, How are we doing? he
said. Next year at this time we can have a good
conversation about how we did this past year as
it relates to the document. But it will be a work
in progress. Learn more about CPR AED.
Bergenfield, NJ, Jersey City, NJ, Livingston, NJ,
and Queens, New York and Gainesville,
FL. Source https//newsarchive.heart.org
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