Matters Of The Heart

You want a heart! You don't know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.-The Wizard of Oz (From the movie: 'The Wizard of Oz)

At the end of last year, I got my Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) card (which is like a CPR card, only you get to do more stuff like give drugs, evaluate heart rhythm and work in concert with a group of other people focusing on saving someone's life).

I've always admired the teamwork behind ACLS teams. (I also find it facinating the ways in which they defuse the tension, but I'll talk more about that another time).

Contrary to the way a "Code Blue" is depicted in TV and movies, the atmosphere surrounding the ACLS team working on a "code" is often calm and controlled. This is partially because of the ACLS algorithms: Everyone involved in the code knows what their job is, everyone knows what everyone else's job is, and they know how to communicate with each other.

It's really facinating to watch and be a part of, and this class helped me understand the process a lot better.

As I was preparing to attend the class, I read the 2010 ACLS textbook from the AHA One short paragraph I'd found in the book was a bit disheartening. I will paraphrase here:

There is not evidence that [Insert drug name here] increases rates of survival to hospital discharge or neurologic outcome after resuscitation from cardiac arrest. However, [insert drug name here] has been shown to increase short-term survival to hosptial admission when compared to placebo.

WHELL HOW the FLIP is this more effective than Basic Life Support (BLS) where you just hit them on the chest a bunch of times, shock them with electricity (if you have an AED), and WAIT for the ACLS team to arrive??

DIS' IS SUPOSTA BE THE MAGIC PART!!

The ACLS team can put an exhaustive effort into bringing a 'dead' person back to 'life', but unless the disease, injury, or imbalance that caused the heart to stop beating properly in the first place is corrected, the patient will 'die' again as soon as the drugs effects wear off.

BOOOO!

ACLS is not a miracle cure. For the most part, all it can do (and is meant to do) is buy time.

PS. If you though this post was going to have something to do with the metaphorical heart in control of human emotion, I'm sorry.