Bystanders help save lives as paramedics response times slashed

MORE people than ever are having heart attacks in Victoria, but paramedics are reaching them faster and saving more lives with the help of quick-thinking bystanders, new data shows.

MORE people than ever are having heart attacks in Victoria but paramedics are reaching them faster and saving more lives, new data shows.

And more bystanders are helping emergency services workers by attending to patients early, with a record 80 people receiving defibrillation from the public in the past year.

One patient who survived a cardiac arrest after his colleague shocked him with a defibrillator said he may be alive today because of the swift response of bystanders.

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Ambulance Victoria paramedics are saving lives by reaching patients faster.

Median ambulance response times statewide for emergency events were 7.7 minutes last year, which Premier Daniel Andrews said was the “fastest response time ever”.

“We are getting to more heart attack patients quicker, and we are saving more lives than has ever been the case,” Mr Andrews said.

Metropolitan and rural response times for the most serious cases had improved on the previous year’s results.

Bystander CPR has increased steadily in the past decade, and is being credited with helping ensure more people walk out of hospital as a result.

Mitcham dad Brett Orpwood, with wife Bec and children Mack and Charlie, went into cardiac arrest but was saved by a defibrillator and fellow runners. Picture: AAP Image/James Ross

Angus Guthrie, 22, had a heart attack at Caulfield racecourse and colleagues were able to use a defibrillator to help save his life.

“Some say I fell down, I might have knelt down, I’m not sure what really happened, next thing I know I’m waking up in hospital,” he said.

“The first kind of respondent was my work mates and colleagues who did CPR and used our own defibrillator we have on site, which kind of kept me going until paramedics arrived.”

Mr Guthrie said he would be forever indebted to the people who helped him, and the whole experience had “made me appreciate life a lot more”.

“Having the defibrillator around and someone to use it was integral to kind of my survival chances,” he said.

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Ambulance Victoria chief executive Tony Walker praised his staff and the work of firefighters and others who are increasingly coming to the aid of victims.

“There’s a jumbo jet full of Victorians alive today as a result of the work that our paramedics, firefighters, bystanders and others do,” he said.

“Three hundred and seventy-nine Victorians survived last year, 20 more than the year before.

“These are people who are clinically dead. Angus is alive as a result of this work.”

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