Spot and React Appropriately to a Cardiac Arrest Emergency

American Heart Association
Image: heart.org

Cardiovascular physician Michael Simons earned his MD cum laude from Yale University School of Medicine. A professor at Yale, Michael Simons is a member of the American Heart Association (AHA).

AHA publishes guides to help people recognize and react appropriately when cardiac arrest strikes. Here’s how to know whether a person you are with has suffered cardiac arrest:

–Loss of responsiveness. The person suddenly cannot respond even if you tap his or her shoulder and ask for a response. If you do this and the person does not move, speak, or react in any way, there is definitely a problem.

–Poor breathing. If the person is not breathing properly or is gasping for breath, then he or she could be having a cardiac arrest.

Here’s what to do about it:

–Call 911. If you have a phone, call 911. If not, call for help and ask whoever responds to call 911.

–Give CPR. If the person is not breathing, proceed to administer CPR. Place your hands on the patient’s lower chest, one on top of the other, and push down 2 inches before coming back up. Repeat at least 100 times every minute until the person starts breathing or help arrives.

Clinical Research Versus Clinical Trials

 

Michael Simons, Yale
Image: medicine.yale.edu

A professor at Yale University, Michael Simons has undertaken extensive research in diverse areas of cardiovascular biology. In a career spanning more than three decades, Michael Simons has taken part in interdisciplinary clinical research programs and even led the first series of trials on therapeutic angiogenesis.

Clinical research and clinical trials sound similar but have unique categorizations. Clinical research is the study of health and illness. It involves human participants and helps translate research done in laboratories into new treatments or groundbreaking insights that benefit patients. There are several elements of clinical research, including treatment research, which evaluates new medications and therapies for treatment; prevention research, which investigates new ways of eliminating the risk of developing certain disorders; and diagnostic research, which investigates new ways of identifying particular disorders.

Clinical trials are the most well-known form of clinical research. They are used to test the safety and effectiveness of new medications or psychotherapies. These trials are conducted in four phases and usually take quite some time to complete. Each phase has a different number of participants, and different dosages of the drug are administered to determine a safe dose range, confirm safety, monitor treatment effectiveness, and identify potential side effects.