Not long ago, the odds were against a Sandy Springs resident who had a heart attack.
Fewer than 1 percent of patients survived. But the Sandy Springs Fire Department is improving those odds through life-saving efforts that combine innovation, training and a heart-felt mission. Now there are thousands of Sandy Springs residents who know how to use lifesaving CPR and the city is being recognized as a leader among its peers in the state of Georgia for its efforts.
Deputy Fire Chief Dennis Ham said the department’s focus on training and equipment accounts for an 18.8 percent heart attack survival rate in 2010, improving on the 8.8 percent rate in 2009. The money for the training and technology comes out of the city’s budget, Ham said.
The city also is one of three in Georgia that have received the American Heart Association’s distinction of being a “Heart Ready City.” The others are Johns Creek and Roswell. Sandy Springs Fire Chief Jack McElfish has also received AHA’s “Mission Award.”
“We’re working every day to be the best at what we do and stay on the cutting edge of technology and that’s been to the the benefit of Sandy Springs,” Ham said.
Mike Willingham, Senior Director of EMS for the American Heart Association has worked closely with Sandy Springs as the city has ramped up its efforts to help heart attack victims.
In 2005, he said, AHA teamed up with Emory University for the Restart Atlanta’s Hearts program, which included forming a database to track patient survival rates from sudden cardiac arrest. He said metro Atlanta’s rate was one of the lowest in the nation.
CPR training and providing greater access to Automated External Defibrillators, AEDs, became top priorities. AEDs are devices given to people with limited life-saving training that allow them to diagnose the patient’s condition and apply an electrical shock to restart a patient’s heart, known as defibrillation.
He said McElfish and Ham were among the first to embrace these concepts and put them to use.
“They were my champions from the start,” Willingham said. “They realized this was something that was truly ground-breaking. When I met with Chief McElfish and Chief Ham they said, ‘We are completely in. We will do whatever it takes to help out.’”
Willingham said the city developed an aggressive plan to train 1,000 people in CPR each year, and Ham said the city has trained 5,000 so far. The Fire Department has also distributed AEDs throughout the city.
The city has put several different life-saving tools in the Fire Department’s hands. The Fire Department hands out thousands of business cards with a Quick Response code, commonly known as a QR code. A QR code is a type of barcode that accesses information when scanned with a special reader that is available on smart phones, such as the iPhone. The code directs users to a short CPR video utilizing a hands-only method.
Sandy Springs said it is the first fire department in the country to use QR codes to teach people CPR.
“We’ve leveraged that technology to educate 10,000 people in Sandy Springs in CPR,” Ham said. “So when our people go out to functions like the Sandy Springs Festival, we are handing these out left and right.”
Ham said the Sandy Springs Fire Department is the only one in the state to use induced hypothermia on cardiac patients. The process pumps a cold solution into the patient’s veins to lower the body temperature and prevent body decay.
The department’s techniques also meant forging partnerships with several of the local hospitals in order to accept patients with induced hypothermia.
The city has also equipped its Fire Department with LUCAS Chest Compression devices that continue performing chest compressions on a patient while rescue crews move the patient to an ambulance.
“When somebody is in cardiac arrest, they’re not always laying by the curb on the driveway,” Ham said. “Most of the time they’re on the 32nd floor, down the hall in a bathroom stuck between the floor and the toilet. We have to get there, get them on a backboard, put them on a stretcher, take them down that hall to that elevator, go out to that parking lot and load them into the back of an ambulance.”
Firefighters Brian Miller and Mark Gadrix said Sandy Springs stands apart in its efforts to save people having a heart attack.
“It’s one of the more progressive departments you’ll see,” Gadrix said.
“The equipment surpasses any place else, without a doubt,” Miller said.
