Early Detection, Alerting Medical Authorities Can Combat Death Due to Heart Attacks During Holiday Season, End Merry Christmas Coronary
Holiday season deaths due to Heart Problems increases, can be deterred by early alert warning system to emergency medical crews.
Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) December 23, 2004
With the busiest time of the Holiday season closing in rapidly, it should be a time of good cheer and anticipation of a new year.
Unfortunately, for thousands of Americans, the Holidays will be their last as they become fatality statistics, a fact evidenced by studies that show deaths from heart problems are more common around Christmas and New YearÂ’s Day than other days of the year.
It‘s those types of statistics that cast a pall on the Holidays for an Atlanta entrepreneur who is a long-standing advocate of early warning systems for emergency medical response teams.
Richard Blackwell is the inventor of NeighborLink (TM) an early alert warning system that can easily be set for such a direct notification of emergency medical response services—faster even then the traditional 9-11 calls—when a heart attack occurs.
“The facts are evident—it takes approximately seven to ten minutes for an emergency response crew to respond to a 9-11 call, “Much longer than the max 5 minutes needed to save a heart attack victim” Blackwell notes.
“For the past year, my company, SafeHome (located at www. safehome. net) has been working to cut such deaths by speeding up the response time through NeighborLink’s (TM) instant alert system that will provide immediate and direct contact to emergency response systems.”
Blackwell notes that the most recent studies of deaths due to heart attacks, in which researchers and medical doctors headed by Dr. David Phillips of the University of Columbia at San Diego concluded that there is a definite increase in deaths due to heart attacks during the Holidays, is especially distressing.
"Quicker notification of emergency personnel could help reduce these deaths," he reflects.
When Phillips and his team examined heart-related deaths that occurred among patients who died as outpatients or who died in the emergency department, they found that 4.65 percent and 4.99 percent more heart - related and non-heart-related deaths, respectively, occurred than would have been expected.
Further, most of these patients died on December 25, 26 or January 1.
Deaths from causes unrelated to heart conditions were also more common on these three days, which Phillips described as "the most popular days of the year to die."
“It is ironic that while not speculating on the specific cause of the heart attacks, the researchers did point to postponing medical care or, equally important the lack of access to medical care as contributing to the victim's death," Blackwell says.
The group suggested that staffing changes that typically occur during the holiday season, including scheduling changes for doctors and other health care professionals creates delays in addressing concerns.
“Add to this the life-saving implications of the need for immediate notification of all available resources, and it is evident that many deaths can be avoided with such emergency communication capabilities.”
He also pointed out that the doctors doing the research urged Holiday travelers to know about emergency medical resources available when traveling.
”Mobility is an important feature of the NeighborLink (TM) early alert warning system,” Blackwell explains. “It fits on a keychain and is easily adaptable for use in a destination city.”
In addition to being easy to use, the NeighborLink(TM) system is affordable, with a one-time investment of only $99, unlike other more expensive systems that require on-going fees and that lack the mobility of BlackwellÂ’s system.
“In 1999, a doctor wrote an editorial for a medical journal in which he coined the terms, ‘Merry Christmas coronary’ and the ‘Happy New Year heart attack’,” Blackwell muses. “Our hope is that potential victims and their families will act proactively, following all the rules of diet, medical care and exercise, and, when that isn’t enough, that they will be equipped to save the precious minutes that might mean the difference between life and death for a loved one.
“While no one can guarantee complete success, it is evident that the quicker the response, the greater the chances to survive heart attacks, and that has beneficial implications throughout the year, not merely during the Holidays.”
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