North Star Central Elementary receives Heart Safe School designation

North Star Central Elementary in conjunction with Project Adam and Youth Heart Watch has been given the designation of being a Heart Safe School through the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

This is one way the school personnel can use their training to increase the likelihood of a positive outcome if a student, staff, or visitor experiences a sudden cardiac event. The requirements included: the development of a cardiac emergency response plan (CERP), forming a cardiac emergency response team (CERT) that is CPR certified, purchasing and maintaining accessible AEDs, and training all staff on how to recognize sudden signs and symptoms of cardiac emergencies.

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), cardiac arrest remains a public health crisis. There are more than 356,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) annually in the U.S., nearly 90% of them fatal. The incidence of EMS-assessed non-traumatic OHCA in people of any age is estimated to be 356,461, or nearly 1,000 people each day. Survival to hospital discharge after EMS-treated cardiac arrest languishes at about 10%. Check out the American Heart Association, https://www.sca-aware.org/about-sudden.../latest-statistics

Study after study has demonstrated that the best chance of saving a life is within the first 4 minutes of a Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA). Survival to hospital discharge for SCA in children ages 1 to 12 is 14.4%, and in children ages 13 to 18 it is 19.9%. Every passing minute reduces the chance of survival by 7-10%. Therefore, reducing time to defibrillation will improve survival by 7-10% per minute. Early and effective CPR has been demonstrated to double or triple the chance of SCA survival. Information from Project Adam, https://www.projectadam.com/SuddenCardiacArrest/Definition

This article originally appeared on The Daily American: North Star Central Elementary receives Heart Safe School designation