It’s about a few minutes. A short period of time in which a person’s fate is decided. Just three to five minutes without oxygen – and irreversible brain damage can occur. In the worst case, brain death. This is how Stephan Prückner, Director of the Institute for Emergency Medicine and Medical Management at the LMU Klinikum describes it. It takes about eight minutes for the ambulance to arrive. “Too long,” says Prückner. In many cases, a person can no longer be helped after a cardiovascular arrest – in many cases it is a heart attack. Up to 70,000 people suffer cardiovascular arrest outside of the hospital every year, but only ten percent of them survive. That should change.
With the “Munich Save Life” project, the city and district of Munich want to improve the chances of survival for those affected. The project officially starts this Wednesday. Specifically, this means that volunteers who happen to be nearby are guided to the location of the emergency with the help of an app in order to start resuscitation measures immediately – even before the rescue workers are there. “The decisive factor here is the time factor,” says the city’s health officer, Beatrix Zurek.
Other countries have already proven that it can work: In Sweden or the Netherlands, where there are such helper systems, the so-called lay resuscitation rate is up to 80 percent, according to the German Council for Resuscitation. That is, in 80 percent of the cases laypeople started resuscitation. In Germany this rate is 40 percent.
Prückner wants to change that. The emergency physician sits on the board of the emergency medicine and rescue work group (ANR) at the LMU, one of the associations involved. The integrated control center in Munich, the rescue association and the medical management of the rescue service are also involved. At a round table a few years ago they agreed that something had to be done. After a long procedure, they started – actually. The press release went out in early March 2020. “And after that we went to the first Corona meetings,” remembers Prückner. Now that the pandemic has become more or less manageable, things should really start now.
The first thing to do is to involve professionals, i.e. people who are active in the rescue and emergency medical services. That doesn’t sound like a big innovation at first, says Prückner. But you have to be clear: These are professionals who work out of their free time. In an emergency, someone in civilian clothes jumps to help – or sometimes rings the doorbell. If someone suffers cardiovascular arrest, passers-by or relatives will inform the emergency number, as before. The control center not only sends an ambulance, but also automatically sends an alarm. It then goes to two trained helpers with the “Mobile Rescuers” app who are in the immediate vicinity. The radius can be changed depending on the environment, says Prückner. If they then accept the call for help, they get the exact coordinates of the emergency location and can identify themselves with the app.
In phase two, in six months at the latest, the circle of possible helpers is to be expanded. Then general medical specialists are recruited and specially trained. Phase three will follow in about a year – in which medical laypeople are asked and are specially trained for this. From then on, anyone who wants to help in an emergency can participate in the project. And because such a situation can always be a burden for helpers, the crisis intervention team is also involved.
Nobody has to be afraid: “You can’t do anything wrong,” said Prückner. Anyone who gives a heart massage in such an emergency can “only win”. Either the person concerned still has a small chance – or none at all.