BACK FROM THE BRINK HOW A QUICK SEQUENCE OF ACTIONS SAVED A MAN WHO HAD A HEART ATTACK IN THE STREET.
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nthony Catanese, MD, a urologist at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) Somerset and a member of RWJBarnabas Health Medical Group, didn’t plan to save a life when he stepped out for a quick walk on March 30. But in a near miraculous sequence of events, his skills as an advanced cardiac life support instructor with experience resuscitating people in distress proved critical to 61-year-old Richard Smekal of Little Egg Harbor. Exiting his office on Main Street in Somerville, Dr. Catanese was stunned to find Richard lying unconscious in the street not far from his door. The doctor instinctively rushed to the man’s side, quickly taking stock of multiple emergency priorities. First, Dr. Catanese stopped traffic to protect Richard from vehicles and asked a bystander to call 911 for emergency assistance. Then he turned to the form crumpled on the pavement. The man’s pulse was slow at first—and then it stopped. Dr. Catanese knew this signaled cardiac arrest, an abrupt loss of heart function. Dr. Catanese immediately started performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), repeatedly compressing the man’s chest to squeeze the heart and keep blood pumping through his body. Richard, a crane operator for PSE&G, has no memory of what happened that day or the array of people in various roles who together saved his life. He had suffered a heart attack as he was working on an electrical pole and, while climbing into his utility truck, had collapsed onto the asphalt. Although Dr. Catanese got to him first, police, EMTs from the Somerville Rescue Squad, paramedics from RWJBarnabas Health Mobile Health Services and Richard’s own crew foreman arrived soon after and took turns performing CPR. Richard’s heart kept stopping, and first responders had to use a defibrillator to shock it back to beating. Before the ambulance arrived, they had resuscitated him four times. He would have to be revived again on the way to the RWJUH Somerset Emergency Department (ED). Dr. Catanese didn’t hold much hope that the man he’d tried to save would live. “Less than 15 percent of people who have cardiac arrest outside a hospital survive,” he says.
Richard Smekal survived thanks to action from bystanders, first responders and multiple cardiology teams at RWJUH Somerset.
CRITICAL CALL
Once the ambulance headed to the hospital, Dr. Catanese called the ED. He knew from the pattern of Richard’s pulse that in Healthy Together
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