Location matters when it comes to getting CPR, study finds - Fox 2 News Headlines

By Deena Centofanti
Fox 2 News Health Reporter

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (WJBK) -- People who collapse from cardiac arrest in poor, black neighborhoods are half as likely to get CPR as those in better off, white neighborhoods says a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine.  So why is that?

Providence cardiac specialist Dipak Shah says the study of 14,000 people found socio-economic factors like race, income and other neighborhood variables combine when it comes to willingness to learn and perform CPR.

"Number one, they're worried about getting robbed.  Number two, a lot of them are worried about getting sued because they just don't know how to do it," he explained.
    
That lack of CPR training in poor neighborhoods drastically lowers the odds you'll survive a heart attack by about half.  The solution is simple.  More people need to know how to do CPR.

"You can almost increase their survival rate by twofold if you can learn CPR, and it's very simple, it's cheap, it's easy.  It should be something, I think someone mentioned is, when you learn to tie your shoelaces, you should learn just about doing compressions and CPR," Shah said.

The American Heart Association is now teaching chest compression only CPR to the tune of "Staying Alive".

More than 300,000 people suffer cardiac arrest every year and they're not in a hospital.  Most of those people don't survive, but CPR can save them.

For more information about Hands-Only CPR or to find a CPR class, click here.