Heart Health Awareness Month: American Heart Assocation · Blood Pressure · Peripheal Artery Disease · Health/Nutrition · Congenital Heart Disease: Donate to Big Hearts To Little Hearts
Although COVID-19 has changed the world, it hasn’t changed the fact that hospitals are the safest place to be if there’s a heart attack, stroke or other medical emergency. Delaying the 911 call that gets you to the hospital can be dangerous — even deadly.
Calling 911 immediately is still your best chance of surviving an emergency. It is SAFE for EVERYONE to call 911. It is SAFE for ANYONE to go to the hospital in an emergency. You shouldn’t worry about the system being able to provide adequate care.
Year in and year out, heart disease and stroke are the top two killers worldwide. Someone in the U.S. will have a heart attack and someone else will have a stroke every 40 seconds. More than 350,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur in the U.S. annually. Hospitals know exactly what to do in these instances to save lives.
Call 911 if you or a loved one experiences heart attack warning signs — chest discomfort; discomfort in other areas of the body such as your arms, back, neck, jaw or stomach; shortness of breath; and other possible signs, like breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea or lightheadedness.
If you or a loved one has stroke symptoms, which you can remember with the acronym FAST: Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech slurring or other difficulty. If you find a loved one or anyone down and unresponsive (with or without a pulse), call 911 and start CPR right away.
Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the #1 birth defect-related killer. Each year more children die from congenital heart defects than from all forms of pediatric cancer combined. There is no cure for any of the 40 types of defects, and little is known about what causes most of them.
Since its inception in 2003, Big Hearts To Little Hearts (BH2LH) has supported many projects including medicinal research, youth heart watch, single ventricle survivorship, treatment of CHD patients as they reach early adulthood, and the purchase of pulse oximeters to be sent home with CHD patients after surgery in order to detect issues before crisis.