Heart(y) News, October 16

Some heart(y) news updates for you this weekend…

Free Spanish-language online video teaches Hands-OnlyTM CPR
From Sept 15 to Oct 15, the Latino community celebrated the Hispanic Heritage Month. In this occasion, the American Heart Association (AHA) encourages people to learn to life-saving skills. And to facilitate learning, a free, Spanish-language online video with instructions on administering Hands-Only CPR is available at handsonlycpr.eisenberginc.com/resources.html.
According to Dr, Ismael Nuno, M.D., cardiac surgeon and AHA spokesperson

“It is critical that Hispanics spread the word in their communities about watching the online video and learning CPR, because a person in cardiac arrest only has a few minutes to receive treatment before they die.”

AHA statement on Calorie Labeling and Food Choices: A First Look at the Effects on Low-Income People in New York City
An AHA statement summarizes the results of studies that evaluate whether calorie information on menus and food labels affect people’s eating habit in terms of food choices. The studies have so far given inconclusive results but more extensive evaluation is ongoing.

Firefighters with AEDs boost cardiac-arrest survival
Swedish researchers report that equipping emergency personnel such as firefighters with automated external defibrillators (AEDs) increase survival chances of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims. Although such a practice called the “dual-dispatch model” is already widely used in many countries, including the US, Sweden is still at the pilot study stage.
According to Dr Comilla Sasson of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (source: heartwire)

“This validates that what we’re doing already works, and its novel that this is being used internationally: people are seeing that this is a model that works and that saves lives. Ultimately decreasing the time that it takes an emergency responder to get to the scene should be of upmost importance to every city, and not every city in the US has first responders who have AEDs. So in that sense, this study does suggest that this really does make a difference to overall survival, and if your community doesn’t have this already, then this really reiterates that you should.”

Scripps starts routine genetic testing for clopidogrel responsiveness
It’s a first step towards individualized or customized health care. Scripps Health is offering patients genetic testing for responsiveness to the antiplatelet therapy drug clopidogrel. Some gene variants make some people in capable of converting the drug into its active metabolite, making the therapy useless.
According to Dr Paul Teirstein, head of interventional cardiology at Scripps Green Hospital and Scripps Clinic,

“Knowing a patient’s individualized risk has a tremendous impact on treatment decisions. The point is to do everything we can to give patients the best possible outcomes. This kind of genomic screening gives us critical information we need to help patients.”

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