..... Recent history reveals some common liability themes confronting sports, recreation and fitness facility operators, whose ability to proactively manage risk will likely determine whether they can mount an adequate defense in the event of a lawsuit:
Many facility operators have in the past been hesitant to purchase and install automated external defibrillators for fear of the liability that might result if one is improperly used.
But cases have begun to emerge that claim that facility owners are liable for cardiac-related deaths that have occurred when no AED is nearby. Scott Johnson, deputy director of the Greensboro (N.C.) Coliseum, says liability should almost be a non-issue when it comes to installing AEDs. "We were one of the first facilities in the country to put those in," he says. "We wanted to take every possible opportunity and precaution to be able to help someone in the event of an emergency.
A lawsuit is always secondary to saving a life." Morgan says facilities can often receive insurance discounts for making AEDs available. Plus, he says, "the cost of those things has come down greatly, so we don't see why you wouldn't want to have them."
First responder saves life of heart attack victim
By Simone Peloquin
Leader-Telegram staff
Dave Evans of Eau Claire got to meet and thank the man who saved his life.
"God bless you and thank you," Evans said Thursday to Joe Alf, a first responder and chief of Emergicare, which provides towns near Eau Claire with emergency medical services.
Evans, 59, went into cardiac arrest the morning of Aug. 20 at Kane Road and Menard Drive in the town of Union, just west of Eau Claire.
"I picked up a trailer to move supplies to another building and I don't really remember anything after that," Evans said.
Evans was driving a truck and trailer when he had the heart attack. Two co-workers saw the truck going off the road and rushed over to stop it, help Evans and call 911.
Alf was on the scene within one minute with an automatic external defibrillator. Alf works next to the intersection where Evans was stricken and was able to shock Evans with the AED.
After being shocked once with the machine, Evans regained a pulse and was taken to Luther Hospital.
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Defibrillator, quick action save golfer
By Lisa Tallyn, Special to the Champion
August 15, 2008
Halton Hills man collapses at golf course
A Halton Hills man learned the benefits of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillators (AED) first-hand recently when he went into cardiac arrest while golfing at a golf course near Milton.
Alistair McEwan, 65, collapsed while finishing the 13th hole at Hornby Glen Golf Course on Hornby Road July 25, said a press release issued by Halton Region.
Fortunately for McEwan, Dr. Dan Honsinger, a McMaster Medical School resident currently working in the emergency department at Credit Valley Hospital, was standing on the 13th tee and witnessed the collapse. He and his golf partner, Kyle Stumpf, a volunteer firefighter from Holland Landing, ran up to the green and immediately initiated CPR.
Kelly Henderson of Halton Hills was working on the beverage cart only a few metres away when MacEwan suffered the cardiac arrest.
Henderson said the three other golfers MacEwan was playing with called her over.
"They were waving and screaming. They told me to call 911," said Henderson, who promptly placed the emergency call and also called the pro shop to have the AED brought out to the 13th hole.
She estimated it was there in about three minutes.
Honsinger delivered two shocks with the AED.
Halton EMS arrived shortly after the second shock.
When the paramedics took over care, MacEwan's vital signs had returned, meaning he had a pulse and was breathing on his own.
By the time they arrived at Milton District Hospital, MacEwan was conscious, alert and had strong vital signs
MacEwan was released from Milton District Hospital July 29 and was transferred to Hamilton General Hospital where he remains.
Brian Thomas, past president of the Rotary Club of Georgetown, of which MacEwan has been a member for several years, said he visited him in hospital last week and, "he's doing very well."
He added MacEwan is expected to remain in hospital several more days.
Halton's medical officer of health, Dr. Bob Nosal, said the "chain of survival was well executed in this situation."
"There was early recognition, early 911, early CPR, early defibrillation, and early advanced care facilitated by golf course staff guiding our paramedic crew to the patient's location," said Nosal.
"When all of the pieces come together like this, we have the best opportunity to achieve a good patient outcome."
SPEAKING FROM THE HEART – Mario Pozo, Assistant Director of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) at the Jersey City Medical Center, spoke at the Aug. 4 City Council caucus on the importance of CPR training.
Cardiac arrest can happen in any place and at any time. And if local facilities have the proper equipment and training, it may save someone's life.
Jersey City Risk Manager Peter Soriero and Mario Pozo, Assistant Director of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) at the Jersey City Medical Center, spoke at the Aug. 4 City Council caucus meeting to encourage city offices and other local organizations to learn to administer CPR and have the equipment to do so in case someone goes into cardiac arrest.
Soriero encouraged the city to become a "HeartSafe Community," and called on employees to undergo CPR training (which city employees did on Aug. 12 at City Hall).
The HeartSafe Community program is already being undertaken in states such as Connecticut in collaboration with the American Heart Association.
To participate, city offices and community organizations need to have a specified number of staff who are trained to use Automated External Defibrillation (AED), to provide CPR, and to provide First Aid.
Pozo said 950,000 Americans die every year of cardiac arrest, and it is the leading cause of death in New Jersey.
City Councilman Michael Sottolano commented that private schools don't have CPR training, and there should be legislation requiring that training.
The HeartSafe Community program has the following goals: promoting and implementing AEDs and First Aid kits in public buildings, private buildings, schools and health clubs; offering CPR, First Aid and emergency training to all city and county employees; and instituting CPR, First Aid, and emergency training as a requirement to graduate from high school. 197 deaths in state per day
According to the 2008 National Vital Statistics Report, 20,655 people, or 28 percent of the state's deaths for 2005, were from heart disease. Also, there were 3,614 deaths in New Jersey that year from stroke.
Of the approximately 197 deaths per day in New Jersey in 2005, 57 died as the result of heart disease, and 10 died from stroke.
Cardiac arrest is the abrupt ceasing of normal circulation of the blood due to failure of the heart to contract effectively.
A stroke is the rapidly developing loss of brain functions due to a disturbance in the blood vessels supplying blood to the brain.
There were nine bills introduced this year in the New Jersey State Legislature that complement the HeartSafe Community initiative, including requiring Police Departments to have cardiac defibrillators, and requiring public and non public high schools to have a person on-site trained to administer CPR.
Comments on this story can be sent to rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com.
Coaches Save Collapsed Teen With Defibrillator
HOUSTON -- He could have been another casualty - but the right emergency equipment and the quick thinking of his coaches have given a teenage football player a second chance at life.
"I'm thinking about how lucky I am just being here," said Lamar High School Sophomore Alex West.
West collapsed during an Aug. 3 practice. Lamar Coachs Lee Malowitz, Mac McDonald and trainer Mike Dyer quickly determined the teens heart had stopped beating.
"By the time I got there he was in cardiac arrest," McDonald recalls.
The trio quickly deployed an automated external defibrillator and literally shocked West's heart back to life.
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A court's decision may signal a change in fitness centers' duty of care with regard to AEDs.
As Previewed in the May 2008 Issue of AthleticBusiness www.athleticbusiness.comFor the full article click here and navigate to page 28.
Aftershocks
By: John T. Wolohan
May 2008
A court's decision may signal a change in fitness centers' duty of care with regard to AEDs.
Look for this Sports Law article in the May issue of Athletic Business.
Sign up for E-News to receive a special preview of Sports Law delivered to your inbox each month.
Any health club that does not have an AED, even in states in which
doing so is not a statutory obligation, runs the risk of being seen as
acting with indifference to the welfare and safety of its patrons and
either negligent or grossly negligent for any deaths that may result
from a cardiac event. That was the message handed down earlier
this year by the Cook County Circuit Court in Fowler v. Bally Total
Fitness [Case No. 07 L 12258], a case that suggests a change in the
way courts are viewing such incidents.
As reported in this space ["Med Alert," April 2007, p. 30], at least seven states, including California, Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, have legislatively mandated that health clubs and fitness centers meeting a specified membership threshold not only maintain an automated external defibrillator, but also train employees on how to use such a device in the case of an emergency. The two main rationales legislatures have offered for requiring health clubs and fitness centers to have an AED are:
1. The sooner a heart attack victim gets medical care, the better his or her chances of survival; and,
2. The cost of purchasing an AED and training employers on its proper use is relatively low, especially when you consider
that a potential result of inaction is the death of a patron.
For the full article click here and navigate to page 28.
Defibrillator saved his life
By Susan Ross Wells
WTVG -- Defibrillator saved his life
Heart disease is our country's number one killer. It almost took the life of a Toledo man, while he was on the job in early June.
A video worth watching.
Madison County Deputies Add AED's to Patrol Cars
Posted: July 30, 2008 06:31 PM
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAAY) - Every year more than 330,000 people die due to sudden cardiac arrest -- that's one person every two minutes. The reason for the attacks vary, but the way to save those lives often out of reach.
Denise Thrikill-Green was getting ready for a tennis match three years ago when she collapsed from cardiac arrest. A recently purchased defibrillator saved her life.
"I was blue, I was dead," Thrikill-Green said. "They don't know how long I've been there. The electrical start the jump from the AED is what brought my heart back to a regular beat."
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Off-duty officers help save man at Stazio Fields
By Zak Brown (Contact)Tuesday, July 29, 2008
When two members of the Guns and Hoses softball team heard the yells — “Is anyone a doctor?” — they figured someone had sprained an ankle.
But when Boulder police officer John Smith and Boulder firefighter Brian Marron ran to one of the dugouts at Stazio Fields on Monday night, they found a much more dire situation.
A 62-year-old man had collapsed in the dugout during a game and wasn’t breathing. He had no pulse, and his teammates had already started CPR. The two off-duty officials had been warming up for a later game and jumped in to help save the man’s life.
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John Craig's mother, Julia Craig-Horne, holds a picture of a her late son.
A Brooklyn man's dedication to his health may have killed him, his distraught mother says.
Personal trainer John Craig, 36, who worked six days a week for six years at the city-owned Paerdegat Athletic Club in Canarsie, died there in March after collapsing, said his mother, Julia Craig-Horne. The club did not have a defibrillator on site - or someone trained to use one, according to legal papers.
"He might have had a chance had there been a defibrillator," said Craig-Horne. "By the time the EMS got there it was too late."
Craig complained of chest pains and passed out twice before anyone called 911, legal papers say. An autopsy found he died of heart disease.
"People say that without him, the gym will never be the same. He was that gym," said Craig-Horne, 66. "There were close to 2,000 people at his funeral. There were police officers, firemen, people of every nationality. That's the kind of person he was."
Larry Kramer, a lawyer for the Craig family, filed a $20 million notice of claim against the city on Thursday. The city owns the parkland where the club is located, but contracts out the operation of the gym.
Craig died less than two weeks before City Controller William Thompson released a report that found unsafe conditions at the club, including dangerous mold, blocked fire exits and exposed electrical outlets in the day care rooms.
The family also believes exposure to toxic mold over long hours at work contributed to Craig's death. Legal papers cite the club's failure to "remedy hazardous and airborne mold and contaminants."
"He talked about the conditions...and how it was not clean," Craig-Horne said.
A Parks Department spokeswoman said the department could not comment until it sees the lawsuit.
Club managers did not return a call.
More life-savers around, but some afraid to use them
Chicago SunTimes Article - July 1, 2008
It's been almost a decade since Chicago became the first city in the world to equip its airports with automated external defibrillators -- known for short as AEDs -- in 1999. Since then, the portable devices are credited with saving the lives of 49 people who'd gone into sudden cardiac arrest at the airports.
They've also become a fixture at malls, schools and fitness centers.
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Maxwell King - Saved by people UNTRAINED in AED Use!!
“It came as a total surprise. I never had heart problems. In fact, I had just had stress test that showed no blockage, no coronary disease.
”Yet on November, 1, 2006, Maxwell King died – for only a few moments, fortunately – of sudden cardiac arrest. He’s around to tell the tale today because of the quick thinking of the people with him that day, and because of a nearby Automated External Defibrillator (AED) that shocked his heart back to life.
“I had walked to a meeting at the Carnegie Museum of Art,” said King, who serves as the head of the Heinz Endowments. “I collapsed in the middle of my presentation from an arrhythmia, an electrical problem with my heart. I don’t remember any of it. Later I learned that at first I was rigid, tense, and breathing raggedly, then my eyes closed and I stopped breathing – I had died.
”Assistant curators in the room started CPR, while the museum director ran downstairs to get the AED. Even though no one there was trained on how to use the AED, they grabbed it, opened it, and followed the voice prompts through all the steps. Within 2.5 minutes of the initial collapse, a single shock had been administered and proved all that was needed to bring King’s heart back into the world of the living. He still had not started breathing again, though, so mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was done next. All of these emergency steps were taken by non-medically trained people who happened to be with King when the unthinkable happened.
“The rescue EMTs didn’t get there for 15 minutes,” he said. “I would have been a goner without the AED and those people who knew what to do. There’s a less-than 5 percent chance of survival without an AED. I’m so extremely lucky that I survived without harm.”
Read the full story on the St. Magaret Foundation - Pulse Website
What Happened to Tim Russert - ABC Follow up
This is a very good ABC Video that explains a lot regarding Tim Russert's death. Pay particular attention to the last few minutes.
Click here to launch the ABC Video in a seperate window.
What Happened to Russert - The Science of Sudden Cardiac Arrest
From an article on the Newsweek .com Website ... http://www.newsweek.com/id/141450
Journalists and politicians across the country were in shock Friday afternoon at news that Tim Russert, the prominent and beloved NBC correspondent, had collapsed and died suddenly of a heart attack in the network's Washington office. Russert had previously been been diagnosed with several risk factors for a sudden heart attack, including coronary artery disease and diabetes. But his death is still a sad reminder that cardiac arrest can strike anyone without warning—and that when it does, it is often fatal.
Sudden cardiac arrest accounts for 310,000 deaths in America every year, or 850 a day—more than those caused by breast cancer, lung cancer, stroke, and AIDS combined. But despite how common the condition is, doctors know little about what predisposes one person to it and not another. The National Institutes of Health is currently mounting a major study at 60 trial sites across the country to try and identify risk factors related to both genes and lifestyle, and will begin enrolling patients this week. For now, says Jeffrey Olgin, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, assessing risk is "a very, very difficult thing. I can't look at you and say you have a 10 percent chance of dying from this."
To read the full story and view the videos Click Here
Automatic External Defibrillators: Life-Savers or A Burden on Business
This video is fairly long, however addresses directly the use and liability issues of AED's in hotels.
A must for the industry
Every once in a while a program or service comes along that ”makes sense” for those of us in the meeting planning industry. As a former President of MPI UK Chapter and a meeting planner for the last 25 years I’ve been witness to many such instances.
I have to say, after browsing the CardioReady website, what CardioReady Certification Corporation proposes “makes sense”. What could be more detrimental to an event, a company and especially a family than the loss of a delegate’s life? For what is a relatively small outlay we, individually (CardioReady by Event), or the venue (CardioReady Certified) can be in a position to save that delegates life. I listened with interest to the testimonial of Gregg Austin (www.cardioready.com/testimonials.asp)
Now any venue, can at any time can claim to have the necessary training, equipment, maintenance schedule and program in place for a medical emergency. But how are we, the planners, to know that everything is up to standard? For that matter, what is the standard?
The answer – Verification. CardioReady’s independent review of the venues entire Cardiac Emergency Response Plan . The arm’s length review validates that they have gone above and beyond to protect delegates.
The question “ Are you or will you be CardioReady Certified in time for this meeting? ” is being added to my RFP’s. We should all look for the CardioReady Certified logo on the response documentation. In fact we should go so far as to let them know it is part of the location decision.
The adoption of standards and change within the industry starts with us. If there is enough demand, the industry will respond.
The loss of any delegate is one too many.
American Heart Association Survey Reveals Americans Lack Confidence in Lifesaving Skills for Common Cardiac Emergency?
DALLAS, May 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Most Americans don't believe they could perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and use an automated external defibrillator (AED) to help save a life in a cardiac emergency,according to a recent American Heart Association survey.
In an online survey of more than 1,100 adults, 89 percent said they were willing and able to do something to help if they witnessed a medical emergency. Yet only 21 percent were confident they could perform CPR, and only 15 percent believed they could use an AED in an emergency. More than half of those surveyed didn't recognize an AED in a typical setting. Survey respondents reported lack of confidence, concern about legal consequences and fear of hurting a victim as reasons they would not take action in a cardiac emergency.
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Quick actions save local man's life
Immediate CPR and a portable defibulator may have saved the life of Robert Isett
By Katie Atkins-Carnevale; Staff Writer
The efforts of a club member, a tennis instructor, a police officer, and an EMT aided in saving a man's life at the Doylestown Tennis Club on Weldon Way on Wednesday, May 14. Robert Isett, a 66-year-old avid tennis player from Doylestown Township was found unconscious and lying on the ground where he had been playing.Club tennis pro Jim Klein made the call to 911 at 9:30:40 a.m., while tennis instructor Cory Smith and club member Dominique Oldre administered CPR
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Drowning Raises Safety Questions
This story raises the question of whether CPR is enough and whether there may be negligence if a facility does not have an AED on site.
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Defibrillator program gets big boost
AED's Protect Employee's As Well !!!
By Allison M. Heinrichs
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, April 20, 2007
It happened suddenly on Saturday: An employee working at a wedding on the 17th floor of the Omni William Penn Hotel collapsed from a cardiac arrest.
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