Alachua County’s bystander CPR rates save lives, study finds
Two minutes into cardiac arrest — when the heart stops pumping and blood ceases to flow to the body’s organs — brain cells begin to die. It only takes another five minutes for irreversible neurological damage to occur.
When every second counts, early intervention is key to survival.
A study University of Florida Health researchers published recently in the Journal of Clinical Medicine shows that following the local activation of PulsePoint, an app that alerts CPR-trained individuals about a nearby cardiac event, rates of bystander CPR performed outside a hospital setting significantly increased in Alachua County.
The findings, believed to be one of the first scientific studies on the impact of a community CPR app in the United States, showcases how community-centered measures can save lives.
“We have always known anecdotally that PulsePoint has made an impact on the community, but this is an important way of showing the causality between the app’s use, instances of bystander CPR and scientifically reviewing the impact it’s had on patient outcomes,” said Torben Becker, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., senior study author and an associate professor in the UF College of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine.