ORLANDO, Fla. – With CPR week starting June 1, the Orlando Fire Department showed News 6 an innovative CPR training method to further increase a cardiac patient’s chances of survival.
Crews on Wednesday showed how they would respond to a cardiac arrest patient by using manual compressions and AutoPulse (resuscitation device) CPR chest compressions.
The method significantly reduces the time between hands-on CPR and AutoPulse CPR with the goal to save a life.
“This year alone we used it 36 times. The Orlando Fire Department averages one cardiac arrest per day on the average. You do more on certain days,” Lieutenant Felix Marquez explained.
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It was on Aug. 15 last year that Orlando Fire Department crews rushed to help Rebecca Soto, 29, after she was struck by lightning while walking her dog, Drake.
And despite their quick arrival to the scene, firefighters praise her husband for performing CPR on Soto first.
On Wednesday, she got to see for herself just how things unfolded that day.
“It was surreal to see because like I said I don’t have a memory of the event at all so seeing like oh that was me, it’s kind of like, it’s a little traumatic but it’s really cool to see the process and how efficient they performed it,” Soto said.
According to the Orlando Fire Department, their overall cardiac arrest patient survival rate has been higher than the national average since the launch of the program.
“What a lot of research shows is high-quality manual CPR show better outcomes within the 4 to 6 minutes so because of that data our guys will compress 4 to 6 minutes manually before even transitioning to this (AutoPulse),” Marquez said.
For anyone interested in learning how to perform CPR or use an automated external defibrillator, you can request training through the City of Orlando website.
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