Medtronic Lawyers, Williams Kherkher

Sudden Cardiac Death

As we live out our days we are often unaware of the time bomb that could be going on inside of us. With increasingly unhealthy diets and lack of exercise, Americans are becoming more and more at risk of suffering serious consequences, ranging from cancer to heart attack to stroke. One of the most severe of these diseases is characterized by an abrupt loss of consciousness: Sudden Cardiac Death.

Sudden cardiac death can strike at any time. Though usually associated with coronary heart disease, death can occur within minutes of shows signs of the acute symptoms. During sudden cardiac death, the heart function simply stops, effectively ceasing the flow of blood and thus oxygen to the rest of the body.

A common misnomer is that sudden cardiac death and cardiac arrest are the same, but this isn’t actually true. While cardiac death deals with heart function, cardiac arrest deals specifically with the cardiac pump, not necessarily the entire heart function.

When someone experiences sudden cardiac death, both brain and permanent death begin to occur within six minutes of the last heart function. For this reason, you must act fast. If cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) does not occur within ten minutes, the chances of survival decrease by up to ten percent.

The most common way to treat people who are at risk of dying from sudden cardiac death is to plant a defibrillator, which sends an electric shock to jumpstart the heart, in the body. However, these devices can be faulty. There have been numerous cases of people who entrusted their lives to a defibrillator that failed.

If you or someone you know has a failed defibrillator, contact the Houston Medtronic Defibrillator Lawyers in the Williams Kherkher law firm by calling 866.950.9000.