By Jordan Carleo-Evangelist
The Times Union (Albany, New York)
Copyright 2006 The Hearst Corporation
All Rights Reserved
Colonie, N.Y. — Jim Hotaling is gracious and grateful. Ask him about the Monster Mash foot race six years ago in Troy, and he politely defers to the man who likely saved his life.
Hotaling, now 66, of Niverville, Columbia County, had just finished the 5-kilometer Halloween race when he collapsed in cardiac arrest. He doesn’t remember much of anything.
What he missed was this: Jack Bevilacqua, a fellow runner and now assistant chief of the Colonie EMS department, ran to his aid to perform CPR, keeping oxygen-filled blood pumping to the stricken man’s brain and heart until city rescuers arrived.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” Hotaling, who still runs, told the Town Board last week, while Bevilacqua outlined a new CPR training campaign that officials hope will dramatically increase the number of town residents who know the life-saving resuscitation technique.
Officials say Colonie is the first community in the region and maybe the Northeast to promote CPR training on such a large scale.
In Colonie, and across the country, grim statistics support Hotaling’s claim of being lucky.
Last year, town EMS workers responded to about 80 cardiac arrests, Bevilacqua said. In 22 cases, they managed to get the patients’ pulse back. Only three patients “ever left the hospital.”
Nationally, about 95 percent of people who are similarly stricken die before reaching the hospital, according to the American Heart Association. CPR, the organization says, can double the chances of survival.
Time is the critical element that determines survival or death, Bevilacqua said. After six minutes of cardiac arrest, when the heart suddenly stops beating normally, the chances of survival drop 10 percent with each additional minute. Oxygen-starved brain cells die.
But in the first six months of this year, of the roughly 25 cardiac arrests town EMS responded to, in only one case had a citizen performed CPR when rescuers arrived, Bevilacqua said.
The assistant chief said he hopes the new program — created by the American Heart Association and known as CPR Anytime — will change that. Using a DVD and a $30 kit, people can learn CPR in as little as 22 minutes, then take a training dummy home and teach others in their family and neighborhood.
Studies have shown that the length of traditional CPR classes, which often delve into the theory behind the technique and can sometimes last hours, prevent some people from enrolling.
Bevilacqua describes the new program as a no-frills approach meant to teach as many people in as little time possible. And using Colonie’s 12 fire departments, which are spread throughout the town as a jumping-off point, Colonie EMS has developed an ambitious goal: By 2008, Bevilacqua wants to see “citizen CPR” in 50 percent of the cardiac arrest cases in town.
That is, someone will be performing CPR when EMS workers arrive half of the time.
The classes will be led by an instructor and have already been scheduled at all 12 departments. The classes — which run about 30 minutes — are free, but students pay $30 for the kit, which includes the 22-minute DVD and reusable training dummy.
People who take the classes will not be certified in CPR, but “There’s really no need for certification for lay people,” the assistant chief said.
The program comes at small price for the town, with the only costs being the instructors and the facilities to hold the classes, he said.
In the future, the town plans to work with schools, neighborhood associations and other groups to extend the reach of the program.
“I’ve never thanked him publicly,” Hotaling, the survivor, told town leaders, reflecting on what he would have missed if he had not survived. “All of the things that happened to me in the last six years are unbelievable.”
The two embraced.
“That was from the heart, too,” he added, smiling. “I’m not a hugger.”
Hotaling, a retired high school soccer coach, said he plans to buy a kit.