If you witness a cardiac arrest, your actions could save a life. Here's what to do

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A cardiac arrest can happen at any time to almost anyone, and experts say the actions of a bystander can mean the difference between life and death. 

There are roughly 60,000 cardiac arrests outside hospitals in Canada every year, according to 2021 data from the Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (CanROC), a national group made up of researchers, scientists and medical responders.

Only one in 10 people who experience a cardiac arrest out of hospital survive — and nearly half of those 60,000 incidents happen to people under age 65, according to a recent report from Heart and Stroke. 

You don't need to have official CPR training to jump in and help, said Tisha White, resuscitation program manager for Atlantic Canada with Heart and Stroke. 

"We just want people to do something rather than nothing," said White. 

"Every minute that goes by that we're not doing something with hands-on compressions or AED, the chance of someone's survival is reduced." 

The number of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests has gone up significantly over the past few years, partly due to more accurate estimates. Other reasons for the increase could be an aging population, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the opioid crisis, say experts. 

The cause of cardiac arrest is an electrical problem that stops the heart from beating. 

"Think about it as if a breaker is turned off. There is no blood that is being pumped from the heart to the brain or the rest of the vital organs," Dr. Roopinder Sandhu told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC's The Dose. 

This is different from a heart attack, which is a blockage of one of the blood vessels in the heart. 

When someone experiences a cardiac arrest, it's key to act quickly, say experts, which is why Heart and Stroke uses the term "chain of survival" to list the steps people can take to help before medical professionals arrive: 

How do you know that someone may be in cardiac arrest? 

"They're going to collapse. They're going to be unresponsive and not breathing. And if they are breathing, they'll have gasping sounds that you might hear," said Sandhu, a professor in cardiac sciences at the University of Calgary.