Meg Farris / Eyewitness News
A group of parents who have lost children, are working to save the life of yours with a simple device that costs less than $2,000.
The family of a former De La Salle student even donated nearly 60 of them to schools and businesses. And doctors agree, they should be everywhere.
Metairie couple Nancy Barcia and her husband were out of the country seven years ago, when a call changed their lives.
"When they first called they told us that he was in intensive care and he wasn't doing well and he had collapsed. And they told us we needed to come home. And when my husband hung up the phone I looked at him and I said, 'They're lying.' I said, 'He's gone,' " said Barcia crying.
Chad Barcia, a senior football player at De La Salle, had 30 colleges writing letters of interest in his athletic skills. But sudden cardiac arrest from an undiscovered genetic heart condition, took his life. Now the Barcia's are part of Parent Heart Watch, a national group whose mission is to get legislation requiring a device that is FDA approved, to be available to everyone.
The automated external defibrillator or AED can shock a heart that's out of rhythm, back to its normal beating cadence. It is simple. Anyone can do it. All you have to do is follow the voice commands. One made by Cardiac Science Corporation of Seattle, won't even fire if something else is wrong with the heart.
"The save rate is significantly high if you have a device ready available. If you can get the therapy from the device to the patient within about a three minute time frame, you give them about 70 percent chance of survival," explained Roger Mattei, a Cardiac Science Corporation AED Specialist.
Dr. Keith Van Meter helped push airlines to get AED's on the planes, when he saved a man's life with one after the plane landed.
"In that little period of time, if you can get to it quickly and shock, you can reorganize the rhythm and have methodical normal heart beat again," said Dr. Keith Van Meter, the Head of Emergency Medicine at LSU Health Sciences Center.
In five seconds without blood flow bringing oxygen tot he brain, you pass out. After four minutes, there is brain damage, then death.
There are 460,000 sudden cardiac arrests deaths in the U.S. each year. Ten to 15,000 are children. In fact, there was recently, just this past September, the death of a young boy in St. Tammany parish. That little boy died at school.
But one girl, who caught a virus and collapsed rounding first base playing softball is alive.
"Her gym teacher recognized very quickly that she was in sudden cardiac arrest and he sent one student to get the AED, the automated external defibrillator that they have in New York state schools. Thank God," said Linda Cotter-Forbes, the mother of Kaitlin who is now 22 years old but nearly died when she was only 15.
The chairwoman of the board of Parent Heart Watch lost her second son to sudden cardiac arrest on her first son's birthday.
AED's should be available anywhere youth congregate, schools, athletic fields, practice fields," said Martha Lopez-Anderson, who lost her son Sean in Florida in 2004 when he was just 10 years old.
Doctors say companies should have AED's too. Because of the good Samaritan law, people who use them and the companies and schools that buy, them are not liable if the person dies. But companies can be found negligent in court now if they don't make them available. Most health clubs in Louisiana, which are those that have more than 50 members, are mandated to have them.
The Barcia family has raised money each year through an August golf tournament and donated 48 AED's to schools and businesses. They are about to donate 11 more in St. Tammany.
For more on Parent Heart Watch: http://www.parentheartwatch.org/
For more on the AED devices that do not require you to push any buttons: http://www.cardiacscience.com/
To donate to the Chad Barcia Foundation or play in the golf tournament: http://chadbarciafoundation.org/
