Valentine’s Day is all about the hearts, but is your heart really as healthy as it can be? One nonprofit organization tried to help as many people in the Saratoga High School community answer this question on Saturday.
The Kyle J. Taylor Foundation worked with 22 other nonprofits across the U.S. to bring free heart screenings and lifesaving education to the school. This is the foundation’s second annual event in honor of National Youth Heart Screening Day. Co-founder and executive director Jennifer Sarmento started the nonprofit after her son, Kyle Taylor, died in Santa Cruz from sudden cardiac arrest in 2018.
“When he was in the ICU, that was the first time we ever heard sudden cardiac arrest. Didn’t know that was a thing, didn’t know that this could happen to seemingly healthy kids,” Sarmento said. “We realized that if we didn’t know, there were many other families that didn’t know, and then finding out that a simple EKG test could have detected what was wrong with his heart is what motivated us to do this event.”
Sarmento said her biggest takeaway from doing this work is that heart issues in children are much more common than people realize. Although it’s reported that one in 300 children have an undiagnosed heart condition that can put them at risk for sudden cardiac arrest, she said the risk could be far greater. Of the 12,000 kids Sarmento’s foundation has screened, she said they’ve identified 115 with issues.
She added that the foundation has commonly caught electrical issues with the heart, specifically Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. It is a rare congenital heart condition identified by an extra electrical pathway between the heart’s chambers, which can cause rapid, irregular heartbeats and palpitations. Although it is usually asymptomatic and manageable, it can lead to cardiac arrest or sudden death.
The event at on the Saratoga High campus had five stations, each led by volunteers with medical knowledge, like students from the Saving Hearts Foundation at UC Berkeley and retired medical doctors. Participants had to fill out a form with some basic health information like height and weight, and symptoms or family history of heart disease.
At the first station, volunteers took participants’ blood pressure. The heart must maintain a certain level of pressure to allow it to pump blood throughout the body. Low blood pressure could indicate low volume of blood from a cause like dehydration. However, high blood pressure is typically a concern because it can damage arteries, disrupt circulation and endanger the heart, brain, kidneys and other body parts.
The second station taught people how to perform hands-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, an emergency lifesaving procedure to keep blood flowing through the body when a person is unresponsive. The volunteers from UC Berkeley educated visitors on pacing chest compressions, checking for someone’s pulse or breathing and the differences between sudden cardiac arrest and a heart attack.
The main difference between the two is that sudden cardiac arrest occurs due to electrical malfunctioning that causes the heart to stop. A heart attack is a circulation issue, caused by blocked blood flow. Symptoms of sudden cardiac arrest include immediate collapse without a pulse or breathing. The symptoms of a heart attack include chest pain, nausea, shortness of breath and sweating.
Volunteers also demonstrated how an automated external defibrillator, or AED, works. Because sudden cardiac arrest is an electrical issue, a defibrillator is necessary to stop and restart the heart with a strong electric shock.
At the last two stations, volunteer nurses conduct an electrocardiogram, or EKG, on participants, then medical doctors read their results. An EKG measures the heart’s electrical activity to detect conditions like irregular heartbeats, heart damage or structural issues. Sarmento said if any irregularities stood out during the screening, there were ultrasounds set up to further diagnose the problem.
One doctor acknowledged that it is not easy to balance all of the things that contribute to overall health, adding that Saturday’s event allowed for the additional screenings that could save someone’s life down the line.
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