A University of Nevada, Reno professor received a $1.5 million grant to develop interactive CPR training films for high-school students.
Dr. Lorrel Toft, a cardiologist and associate professor at UNR’s School of Medicine, is developing interactive films and other media with funding from the National Institutes of Health in collaboration with Coram Technologies.
In September, she received a two-year, $1.48 million grant from the NIH to create realistic, interactive films to train student-athletes to identify cardiac arrest and give immediate CPR on the field.
“We want to equip and empower athletes to be ready to respond if they ever have a teammate who collapses from cardiac arrest,” Toft said. “Every minute of delay to giving CPR or defibrillation decreases survival by 10%.”
More than 350,000 people in the U.S. experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year, and fewer than 11% of them survive. Being near someone who can perform CPR improves a person’s chance of survival, but training rates in the U.S. are low, according to UNR.
Cardiac arrest is the leading cause of death among high school athletes, standing at one in 50,000 to 80,000 students each year, according to UNR.
“Getting trained to give CPR is important, but we can be more efficient and effective with training as a nation,” Toft said. “I focus on high school because that’s where the opportunity lies, but there are many other applications.”
The training film her team will develop focuses on helping students and athletes identify the signs of cardiac arrest — to separate them from other common athletic injuries — and learn how to respond quickly.
“It’s a simple idea, but it moves the needle in a significant way,” Toft added.
Source: UNR
