Is Your Student Safe?

The beginning of another school year means the beginning of school sports including football, soccer, cross country and swimming. All too often, school sports result in injuries to athletes and, in some cases, incidents of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). Although SCA in athletes makes the headlines, it’s important to know that SCA can happen to anyone including a seemingly healthy child.

Sudden cardiac arrest in a young person usually stems from a structural defect in the heart or a problem with the heart’s electrical circuitry. The most frequent cause, accounting for about 40% of all cases, is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or HCM.

HCM is a genetic heart condition that affects 1: 500 individuals, including men, women and children of all ages. HCM is characterized by a thickening of the heart muscle and can lead to sudden cardiac arrest.

Approximately 50% of individuals with HCM experience no symptoms, and don’t even know they have the condition, until tragically, sudden cardiac arrest occurs.  In 9:10 cases the outcome is fatal, resulting in unimaginable grief for families and fellow students.  Yet better outcomes can be achieved with early electrical stimulation of the heart – delivered by a small, fully automated, easy to use box.

Given that educational institutions house more than 20% of the American population every day, you’d think they would be fully prepared for this eventually. But sadly, they are not.

At the time of writing, only 19: 50 states in the U.S. require that at least some of their schools have automated external defibrillators [AED’s].  In some states, AEDs are required in public, but not private schools. In other states, AEDs are required in high schools, but not elementary schools. Some states require AEDs only in schools offering athletics. Only two states – Hawaii and Oregon – require AEDs in colleges.

To find out whether your state requires AEDs in schools, click here to view an interactive map.

Although schools and colleges are ideal and obvious locations for AED deployment, concerns regarding legal liability and litigation have been perceived as a barrier to purchasing and deploying AEDs.  Fortunately this is slowly changing.  Recognition of the need to protect youth from sudden cardiac arrest is gaining momentum in many states:

In Pennsylvania, Sen. Andrew Dinniman has sponsored Senate Bill 606, Aidan’s Law, named for Aidan Silva, a seven-year-old Chester County resident who succumbed to SCA in September 2010.  Aidan had no symptoms of a heart condition prior to his death. Aidan’s Law will help ensure that every public school in Pennsylvania has an AED that is up to date and ready to use.

Rep. Connie Pillich, of Cincinnati, has introduced a bill focused on SCA in student athletes. House Bill 180 requires the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Department of Education to jointly develop guidelines and materials to educate students, parents and coaches about SCA. The measure bans a student from participating in a school-sponsored athletic activity until the student submits a signed form acknowledging receipt of the guidelines and materials created by the health and education departments. Individuals would not be allowed to coach a school-sponsored athletic activity unless the individual has completed, within the previous year, a sudden cardiac arrest training course approved by the health department.

John Ellsessar, whose son Michael died during an Oxford High School football game in 2010 from cardiac arrest, believes automated external defibrillators should be as readily available at school settings as fire extinguishers.

Ellsessar, is pushing for legislation to require all schools to have defibrillators, said he and his wife were horrified when they learned that at most schools that have the medical devices, but they are locked away in nurses’ offices, instead of being ready for emergencies.

And in Rhode Island, high school seniors will be required to be trained in CPR and the use of a defibrillator before they can graduate. Under the legislation signed into law by Gov. Lincoln Chafee, students will receive training that includes a hands-on course in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and an overview of the use of an AED.

The National Parent Teacher Association has also adopted a resolution calling for public schools to develop emergency response plans that include summoning help, performing CPR and using automated external defibrillators to save lives. The PTA also called for ongoing CPR-AED training in schools and legislation that would fund placement of AEDs in every school, while providing immunity for people who use the lifesaving devices in good faith.

To learn more about sudden cardiac arrest and how you can help please visit http://www.sca-aware.org

Teaching your child the ABC’s of Heart Health

Heart disease is not a major cause of death among children and teenagers, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention it is the largest cause of death among adults in the United States. In fact, someone in America dies every 37 seconds from some form of cardiovascular disease.

Certain factors that play an important role in a person’s chances of developing heart disease. Some of these life-style risk factors can be changed, treated, or modified, and some, such as congenital heart disease cannot.

Zachary Stone M.D, a primary care physician at the University of Alabama, agrees that it’s possible to build a future free from cardiovascular disease by starting heart-healthy habits at a young age. Most of the risk factors that affect children can be controlled early in life.

“The process of atherosclerosis, which is the hardening of the arteries and is known to cause heart attacks, strokes and sudden death, has been shown to begin in early childhood,” says Stone. “It’s important to concentrate on healthy lifestyles in children to prevent adult cardiovascular disease.”

The three main areas to watch are diet, activity levels and smoke exposure.

Diet: Good nutrition can help to decrease cardiovascular disease. It can help prevent hypertension, high cholesterol and obesity. Obesity is a major risk factor for heart disease. 1 out of every 3 American adults is obese and obesity is linked to more than 110,000 deaths in the United States each year. Childhood obesity in the United States is also on the rise. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, between 16% and 33% of children and teenagers are obese. Because obese children are more likely to be obese adults, preventing or treating obesity in childhood may reduce the risk of adult obesity.  A young person’s diet should be low in saturated fats and primarily consist of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

Activity: One easy way to increase physical activity in children is to limit their sedentary activities.  Parents should limit television and multimedia to 1-2 hours per day and ensure that their kids participate in at least one hour of moderate activity daily.

Smoke exposure:  Exposure to smoke is dangerous to the health of a child for many reasons, including that it can increase the risk of developing heart disease as an adult. According to the CDC, more than 3.6 million middle and high school students smoke cigarettes, and nearly 4,000 kids under age 18 try their first cigarette every day.  More than 90,000 people die each year from heart diseases caused by smoking. Among young people who would otherwise have a very low risk of heart disease, cigarette smoking may cause as many as 75% of the cases of heart disease. And, the longer a person smokes, the higher the risk of heart disease. Parents should talk openly to their kids about both the dangers and bad effects of smoking, such as yellow teeth, bad breath, smelly clothes, shortness of breath and lung damage.  Parents also need to act as a role model for their children, by not smoking or allowing others around them to smoke, thereby reducing their exposure to second-hand smoke.

Keeping kids heart healthy is an investment in their future and yours, and may be the best gift you can ever give.

Allergic to Valentine’s Day?

Does Valentine’s Day make you sick?

Those of us who don’t expect to receive cards and flowers tomorrow, would probably rather fast-forward to February 15^th than endure a day of being surrounded by loved-up romantics.

However, it seems that it’s not only singletons who want to forget the 14^th. People with food allergies may also want to give cupid a wide berth.

“Having an allergic reaction immediately after kissing someone who has eaten the food or taken the medication that you are allergic to isn’t highly unusual,” says allergist Sami Bahna, MD. “However some patients react after their partner has brushed his or her teeth or several hours after eating. It turns out that their partners’ saliva is excreting the allergen hours after the food or medicine has been absorbed by their body.”

Symptoms of kissing allergies include swelling of the lips or throat, rash, hives, itching and wheezing.

When things turn more intimate, allergies can be even more disruptive. Allergists have seen cases of people experiencing allergies to chemicals in spermicides, lubricants, latex or even a partner’s semen. Some people even develop hives or wheezing from the natural chemicals released by their own body during sexual interaction.

So what are lovebirds to do?

If you suffer from food or medication allergies, before puckering up you should ask your partner to brush his or her teeth, rinse his or her mouth and avoid the offending food for 16 to 24 hours before smooching.  For people allergic to their partner’s semen, we suggest the use of condoms or better still, that you visit your allergist to discuss immunotherapy or allergy shots.

Whether you’re celebrating  Valentine’s Day tomorrow or not, SRxA’s Word on Health wishes you a happy and healthy February 14^th.

I Spy an AED

SRxA’s Word on Health loves a good challenge – and they don’t come much better than this.  A group of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania are set to save lives with cell phone cameras… and they need help.

The MyHeartMap Challenge, will be a month-long contest starting in mid January. It will invite Philadelphians to the streets and social media sites to locate as many automated external defibrillators (AEDs) as they can. AEDs are lifesaving devices used to deliver a controlled electric shock and restore normal cardiac rhythm following a heart attack.  AED’s are widely used in hospitals and by pre-hospital providers such as EMT’s; but they can also be used by people with no medical training since they provide audio instructions that talk users through the process of performing CPR and defibrillation.

There’s an estimated one million AEDs across the nation. Some are hung clearly on the walls in airports and casinos, but others are tucked away in restaurant closets and under cash registers in coffee shops. Since  AEDs are not subject to regulations that would allow their makers to know where or when their devices are being used there’s currently no uniform system to track their location.

The contest hopes to change that.  Furthermore, it’s just a first step in what the Penn team hopes will grow to become a nationwide AED registry project that will put the lifesaving devices in the hands of anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Armed with a free app on their mobile phones, contest participants will snap pictures of the lifesaving devices wherever they find them in public places around the city. Contestants will then use the app to geotag the photos with their location and details about the device and send them to the research team via the app itself or the project’s web site.

The data collected will be used to create an updated app linking locations of all public AEDs in the city with a person’s GPS coordinates to help them locate the nearest AED during an emergency.

Better still – the person or team who finds the most AEDs during the contest will win $10,000. Additionally, people who find various pre-located “golden AEDs” around the city will win $50.

“More and more, scientists are learning that we can benefit from the wisdom of the crowd,” says MyHeartMap Challenge leader Raina Merchant, MD, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine. “Participation from ordinary citizens will allow us to answer questions and make the city safer than our team could ever do on its own.”

MyHeartMap Challenge participants can register as individuals or teams, and the Penn researchers suggest participants develop creative ways to maximize their chances of winning. If, for instance, a team can figure out how to use their social networks via Twitter and Facebook to engage people who work in public locations in Philadelphia to take photos of AEDs, the team could win $10,000 dollars without even leaving their desks. These “virtual teams” could prove to be faster and more efficient than any individual working alone. Participants can also organize AED scavenger hunts or mini-contests to locate all the AEDs in a workplace building, or compete against friends to see who can find the most devices. The researchers encourage participants to start strategizing and forming teams now so they can be first out of the gate to win.

What are you waiting for?