Cardiac arrest can affect you at ‘any age.’ What to know about risks

Every nine minutes a Canadian suffers a cardiac arrest outside the hospital and only one in 10 people will survive, according to a report by the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Brock Ruether was a seemingly perfectly healthy teenager, athletic, friendly and outgoing. He loved dirt biking and playing the board game Risk.

In May 2012, the 16-year-old from Fairview, Alta., was at a high school volleyball practice when he collapsed to the ground from cardiac arrest. His heart had stopped beating.

An ambulance was called and CPR started within minutes. But it was not enough to save him. The one item that may have saved his life, an automated external defibrillator (AED), was right next to him but never used.

“Despite the availability of the AED, nobody was trained to get it or recognize that this was a sudden cardiac arrest emergency,” Kim Ruether, Brock’s mother, told Global News.

“They retrieved it and put it beside him, but they never used it. And so that was a big part of his demise, which again, no blame, but it’s a tragic reality that he went from an enormous chance of survival to zero in the 15 minutes that he laid on the gym floor.”

That’s because when it comes to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest — like what happened with Brock — every second counts and fast action can save a life. Immediate CPR keeps the blood pumping to keep the brain and other vital organs alive and an AED will shock the heart to help it restart, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Survival drops significantly every minute without these life-saving measures.

“I wish people realized that sudden cardiac arrest can affect anyone at any age, and there are a multitude of children and young adults that have cardiac arrests every year,” Kim said. “What I also wish people knew is that a simple CPR class goes so far in teaching you how easy it is to do CPR and use an AED. An AED is easier to use than your cellphone.”

Every nine minutes a Canadian suffers a cardiac arrest outside hospitals and only one in 10 people will survive, according to a report released Thursday by the Heart and Stroke Foundation.