Topic: Medicine and Health

Spectators Increasingly Saving the Lives of Athletes

For athletes experiencing a heart attack, timely CPR from an onlooker may be the difference between life
and death.

An increase in bystander interventions during sports-related heart attacks with cardiopulmonary

resuscitation (CPR) has been shown to increase athletes’ chances of survival.

A recent study shows that the incidence of death due to sports-related heart attacks has sharply
declined in recent years, even though there has not been a significant reduction in the prevalence of
heart attacks. Researchers concluded the decrease was the result of bystanders administering care at a
much higher rate. The effects of interventions shortly after the onset of heart attacks were easily visible.
Professor Xavier Jouven of the Paris Sudden Death Expertise Center noted that “bystander CPR was
associated with a nearly eight times greater likelihood of sudden cardiac arrest victims surviving to
hospital discharge.”

ESC Congress 2019 https://esc365.escardio.org/vgn-ext-templating/Congress/ESC-CONGRESS-

2019/Emergency-medicine-the-French-touch/194044-cardiac-arrest-during-sport-activities

Topic: Medicine and Health

Double Bubble Before your Discectomy

Patients might not be as prone to surgical complications as anesthesiologists once thought.

Researchers found that chewing gum before and after a surgery did not lead to complications previously
thought to occur. Additionally, chewing gum might even speed up recovery to for certain procedures.

A major concern of anesthesiologists, the physician responsible for putting a patient to sleep during
surgery, is the contents of the stomach travelling to the lungs. Once in the lungs, bacteria from the
stomach can multiply causing a dangerous infection. It was previously thought that chewing gum
increased the rate at which this occurred, but new research suggests this fear was unfounded. Likewise,
John Doyle at the Cleveland Clinic and his colleagues found that chewing gum could carry numerous
benefits, such as decreased preoperative stress and increased postoperative bowel function.

The Open Anesthesia Journal https://benthamopen.com/FULLTEXT/TOATJ-13-40