Sudden Adult Death Syndrome

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Steve Rotheram]

Again, I could not agree more. John Moores and other universities have done fantastic work. I looked at some of the material from the Football Association. It runs the association football medical screening programme for youth trainees, which involves the screening of 750 youth players. The International Olympic Committee has recommended that all countries screen their athletes to minimise the risk of SADS. That indicates the benefits of screening, so let us look at an early intervention strategy for at-risk groups as an initial step.

Even in the past week, it has been pleasing to see the Football Association and the British Heart Foundation form a £1.2 million fund to ensure that 900 defibrillators are made available to clubs in non-league football and the women’s super league. That is real action that will make a real difference, but although it is encouraging that sport has woken up to this condition and recognised what I would term its social and moral responsibility, there is more work for the medical profession to do and more support for the Government of this country and our partners across the developed world to give.

A simple ECG can expose whether a patient has irregular electrical or structural problems with their heart that can lead to SADS. Currently, however, standard cardiovascular risk assessment screening is not as precise as it needs to be in identifying symptoms relating to sudden cardiac arrest, which is why the British Heart Foundation is undertaking vital research into the genetics around SADS, on which it hopes to publish a report shortly. In the meantime, the Government can play a leading role in encouraging pathologists and coroners who determine that a person has died of SADS to inform immediate family members to ensure that they receive an ECG at the earliest possible opportunity. The Government should also support the medical industry’s work to improve the scientific precision of screening. Such Government measures should form part of the proposed new national strategy to improve heart safety and reduce preventable deaths from sudden cardiac arrest, as set out in the motion.

I hope that today’s debate and any subsequent debates will achieve a number of things, but it is pivotal that the imperative relationship between CPR and defibrillators is exposed: a defibrillator on its own cannot save a life; CPR on its own has an outside chance of saving a life, but the two together have a more than 50% chance of saving a life. How do we know? Ask people such as Fabrice Muamba. His collapse on a football pitch, in front of thousands of spectators at White Hart Lane and millions watching on television, was perhaps the most graphic illustration of SADS, and his recovery is the best example of what can be achieved with swift and targeted intervention.

Bystanders witness more than half the cardiac arrests that occur in public, but not enough people have the life-saving skills to help those heart attack victims. CPR is the first action in the chain of survival and is crucial in the first minutes after a cardiac arrest, because it helps keep oxygen moving around the body, including the brain, which is why the British Heart Foundation campaign tells us to phone 999 and press hard and fast to the beat of “Staying Alive”. It is a simple message, which works, and we have all seen it on television. CPR essentially buys a patient time. A defibrillator starts the heart, but cannot be used on a still heart, so unless CPR is administered, a defibrillator is effectively useless.

That point is crucial, and is at the heart of—forgive the pun—why colleagues and I, in consultation with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh, chose to include first aid in today’s motion. Medical experts believe that CPR combined with a defibrillator shock can triple the survival chances of somebody who has suffered a cardiac arrest outside hospital. I shall repeat that: it can triple survival chances. That is extraordinary. CPR and a defibrillator shock can buy paramedics time to arrive, prevent serious brain damage and ultimately increase the chance of a full recovery. I am not sure that there is any need for further debate. If someone’s child or loved one had a cardiac arrest, would they not want to triple their chance of survival?

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. I add my sentiments to those expressed already on the wonderful work that the OK Foundation and the King family have done. I pay tribute to South Central ambulance service, which does wonderful training in my constituency. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, although it is tremendous that community organisations have invested in equipment and training in their localities, a benefit of a national push, such as that that we had with digital hearing aids, is that it drives down the cost of equipment and training, no matter who pays for it? It is important to get across that message about why we should put more oomph behind such work.

[Steve Rotheram]

It is an excellent point, which I will mention later in my contribution. The hon. Lady is absolutely right. If we persuaded the Government, Government bodies, large organisations or a combination of people to purchase AEDs, the price would plummet because they would order in bulk. I think they are £1,200 to £1,500 per unit at the moment, but empirical evidence from other countries shows that, when they are purchased in large volumes, their price comes down to almost 40% of the original cost.

Finally, I shall address directly what the Government can do to help, and it is simple: legislation. It can be done in a controlled and progressive manner and, in the current economic conditions, it need not cost the earth. Legislate first in education: enshrine mandatory emergency life skills training in the curriculum; ensure that every child who walks out of school at 16 or 18 possesses life-saving skills, and ensure that this Parliament, here and now, commits to having a new generation of life savers. We have the support to do it. Will we need to come back with another 100,000 signatures to get the Government to act? According to a British Heart Foundation survey in 2011, 86% of school teachers agree that such skills should be part of the curriculum, 78% of children said that they wanted to be taught how to save someone’s life in an emergency, and 70% of parents thought that children should be taught emergency life skills in school. When we place emergency life skills education in the context of my earlier point about the relationship between CPR and defibrillators, we begin to see just how many lives we could save daily, monthly and yearly.

The Government, though the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, should introduce legislation such as the Canadian province of Manitoba’s Defibrillator Public Access Act. In Canada, public consultation and medical expertise identified the most likely places for a person to suffer a cardiac arrest—apart from in hospital, of course—and legislated to ensure that all those buildings, such as gyms, football stadiums, golf courses, schools and airports, had to have an AED fitted by January 2014.

There is also a financial argument: fitting AEDs could save the NHS millions of pounds, because survivors would not need the same degree of critical care or, potentially, aftercare. To discredit further the myth that it would be too expensive, let us once again put it into context: a defibrillator costs about the same as a PC and if we put AEDs in public buildings, that cost will come down, as the hon. Lady identified, as it does for other equipment ordered in bulk.