A Wake official says the heart-saving devices are vital in high-rises
Copyright 2006 The News and Observer
By CINDY GEORGE
The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
A day after a Wilson lawyer died at the Wake County Courthouse, apparently of a heart attack, the county’s emergency medical director says the community needs to get serious about defibrillators.
That is especially true with an increasing number of high-rise residences in Raleigh, said Dr. Brent Myers. He noted that 80 percent of cardiac arrests happen at home.
“Now we are going to have to have serious conversations about where we place [defibrillators] when people are living 10, 15, 30 stories above ground,” said Myers, who oversees 911 dispatchers, 1,500 firefighter first-responders and 225 paramedics.
The Soleil Center planned near U.S. 70 and Crabtree Valley Mall includes condominiums and could be as tall as 42 stories. A downtown headquarters for RBC Centura could rise to 31 floors and might have condos. Plus, there are a slew of shorter residential high-rises under construction in downtown Raleigh.
The Wilson lawyer, Tom Farris, had a history of heart problems and collapsed Thursday in a fifth-floor courtroom. The courthouse does not have a defibrillator.
It is unclear whether having an automated external defibrillator, or AED, would have saved Farris’ life. An AED treats only one type of heart rhythm, which occurs in about one-third of cardiac arrests, Myers said.
“If [the AED] is there and you are in that rhythm, it’s very helpful,” he said. “The rhythm that it treats is the one that most people survive from.”
Wake paramedics carry a more sophisticated device that can interpret a variety of heart rhythms. Today’s machines have small electrodes, not the large paddles of the past.
Local malls, arenas and the State Fairgrounds have the life-saving portable devices.
In 2004, a defibrillator retrieved from a Duke campus police cruiser revived a man outside Cameron Indoor Stadium before a Duke basketball game.
Four units are always in the RBC Center, said assistant general manager Larry Perkins. And during games, there are generally four to six EMTs on standby — and each one of them has a defibrillator.
“We don’t want to wait for something to happen and then say we should have done this or should have done that,” Perkins said.
Two defibrillators were installed at the Streets at Southpoint before the Durham mall opened in 2002, said senior marketing manager Courtney Phillips. Raleigh’s Crabtree Valley Mall, open for more than 30 years, got two defibrillators three months ago.
“We just wanted to make sure we had something in case an emergency arose,” said marketing director Sandra Geist.
A committee that includes Myers has determined that defibrillators are necessary in 18 of Wake County’s buildings, said county spokeswoman Sharon Brown on Friday. The county plans to buy 72 units that will cost about $1,500 each, she said.
Priority goes to the high-rise buildings on the list, including the Wake County Office Building, which shares a skywalk with the courthouse, the county jail across the street and the Garland H. Jones building downtown.
The first will be installed in the courthouse, possibly by June, Brown said.
Two emergency medical teams responded to Thursday’s 911 call from the courthouse.
Myers, who was in the second group, said Friday that both teams had defibrillators. Farris was placed on a monitor, but Myers said he cannot elaborate on what treatment the lawyer received because of privacy regulations.
It took six minutes for the first group to arrive, Myers said. That included about 90 seconds for dispatchers to determine the location because the call was made from a cell phone. It also took time for the ambulance — in a building across the street — to make the one-way loop to the courthouse door.
“The sheriff’s deputies did a great job of holding the elevators,” Myers said. “Regardless, it does take time. ... Six minutes is pretty good considering you have to get to the fifth floor in a very busy building.”