By Kimberly Sherman

The average ambulance response time in Visalia is seven minutes. Those harrowing moments become devastatingly long when a loved one collapses and lies crumpled on the ground.

Should that happen, what would your initial reaction be? What would be your response? Using CPR (Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation) to help save lives has been the standard procedure for many years, but performing the traditional chest compressions and breaths are simply not enough.

Wrap your mind around a new acronym: AED, or Automatic External Defibrillator. Used in combination with CPR, the AED can—and has—sparked lives back from the brink of death within Tulare County.

The combination of CPR and AED needs to be performed within five minutes of the victim’s collapse. Since the average ambulance response is seven minutes, our knowledge of AED use could make the difference between life and death. Every minute thereafter, the chance of survival decreases by 10%.

You may have seen the signs with the crisp letters “AED” above a lightning bolt-flanked red heart throughout the city of Visalia and reaching into more remote areas of Tulare County.

“Bystander CPR is paramount to saving lives. In 2005, the American Heart Association (AHA) changed the CPR procedures. It is now easier to learn, thus increasing hopes of greater public education,” says Larraine McElroy, Registered Nurse and Coordinator of the Visalia Breakfast Rotary Heart Safe Community Program. “Sudden cardiac arrest is usually due to an electrical disturbance in the heart. The only thing that can convert the rhythm back to (that of) a beating heart is a defibrillator.

“Although CPR will not actually re-start the heart, it is an imperative first step in helping maintain the viability of the major body organs. Performing CPR at a thirty to two ratio of chest compressions to breaths buys the victim time while awaiting the arrival of the AED. You must use both, not just one or the other,” says McElroy.

The Visalia Breakfast Rotary Club’s heart-felt project, the Heart Safe Community Program started about eight years ago through the energy of Dru Quesnoy, the Rotary President at that time, and has flourished over the past several years. The program has been instrumental in introducing AEDs and their proper usage into the community.

“Each year we try to place at least ten AED units. So far the Rotary Club has donated/implemented seventy-five units, thanks to our annual golf tournament and crab feed fundraiser. In addition, we’re managing another thirty that have been purchased elsewhere,” says Marvin Hansen, a Visalia Breakfast Club Rotarian and Administrator of the AED program.

The Visalia Breakfast Rotary’s goal is to outfit the county with AEDs where they will provide maximum benefit for the community. The primary focus is to place units in non-profit and governmental facilities where large groups of people congregate.

The Fox Theater, city facilities, county courthouses, recreation/senior centers, the YMCA, and the Boys & Girls Club are just a few of the local places and organizations sporting the life-saving machines. Aside from providing training assistance on the AED units, the Visalia Unified School District has two to four machines in each high school and middle school, as well as inside the district office.

With the amount of time, money, and energy placed into implementing the AED system for Tulare County residents, the Visalia Breakfast Rotary Club feels that should one life be saved, all efforts make the venture a successful one. To date, two lives in Tulare County have been saved thanks to the implementation of AEDs.

Tom Bush is one thankful fellow who lives to tell about his life-saving experience. In 2004, Bush, then 72, routinely spent his days exercising at the Visalia Boys & Girls Club facility. After working out one day, Bush was on his way out and suddenly collapsed. A sudden cardiac arrest pummeled Bush to the floor, blackening his eyes and bruising his extremities.

“There was a nice girl who worked there. They had just received this AED thing, and she had received instructions on it about a week earlier,” says Bush. “She said she (shocked) me twice before my heart started again and the paramedics came and took me to the hospital.”

Bush woke up after being comatose for eleven days in the hospital. A double bypass and two valve replacements later, Bush is alive and kicking, thanks to immediate CPR and use of the AED.

“Thank goodness she saved my life,” Bush says. “They ought to have one of those AEDs just about everywhere you go.”

Each facility that keeps an AED under the umbrella of the Visalia Breakfast Rotary Heart Safe Community Public Access Defibrillation Program must do monthly checks of the system and have two people certified in CPR and the use of the AED. Keep in mind, however that anyone can use the system, and McElroy insists that if you simply turn the machine on, its voice commands will talk you through the life-saving procedure. The most important part of having access to an AED is knowing that it is there and not being afraid to utilize it.

The Heart Safe program has a partnership here in Visalia. The Visalia Breakfast Rotary provides the management and funding, the City of Visalia and the Visalia Fire Department do the monthly monitoring of the AEDs as required by the FDA and AHA, and the Visalia Unified School District provides the AHA Training Center for CPR/AED certification. Kaweah Delta Medical Center has been an instrumental partner in the past.

Dr. David Cislowski, Cardiologist and Medical Director of the Visalia Breakfast Rotary AED Program, has high accolades for McElroy and her persistence in keeping the program running in top order. “Larraine has trained hundreds of people in the use of AEDs. She is the heart of this program,” he says. “The more people who know about them, the better off we will all be.”

“We would like defibrillators to be out there like fire extinguishers.”

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