Health: World Restart at Heart Day 2021, CRI marathon on the importance of life-saving maneuvers

Imagine thousands of people in the squares and shopping centers of 19 Regions of Italy who, at the same time, to the musical notes of Stayin ‘Alive, apply heart massage, to musical rhythm, on thousands of mannequins lying on the ground. It is the marathon organized by the Italian Red Cross to celebrate the World Restart a Heart Day (Wrahd), the initiative launched by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (Ilcor) which aims to raise awareness of the importance of life-saving maneuvers. The objective of the CRI initiative: to reach 1 million chest compressions by involving people while they shop or maybe stroll through the streets of the main cities of Italy. More than 700 volunteers from 180 Committees of the Italian Red Cross, in fact, will be engaged on Saturday 16 October to achieve these goals by involving as many people as possible because “All citizens of the world can save a life”. The importance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. In fact, during the first minutes of cardiac arrest in adults, a certain amount of oxygen is still present in the blood and lungs, so chest compressions started immediately could save hundreds of thousands of lives every year. The possibility that a victim of cardiac arrest can survive therefore depends on time because, in the absence of resuscitation maneuvers, damage to his organs and in particular to the brain, becomes irreversible in a few minutes. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) carried out in the moments following the arrest increases the patient’s survival rate by two to four times. As a result of this event, in Europe and the United States, about 700,000 people die every year, 50,000 of them in Italy. 70-80% of these events take place in private homes, while 1/3 of the events happen in the workplace or on the street. After out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, the overall survival rate is 2-10%. This percentage rises to 20%, 30%, 50%, 70-80% depending on the degree of diffusion of the semi-automatic external defibrillators at the territorial level. Despite the possible efficacy and high degree of safety of both CPR and AED defibrillation, few victims of cardiac arrest are rescued by witnesses. From the EuReCa One data published in 2014 in Europe, it is estimated that in Italy this occurs in less than 30% of cases compared to a European average of 47.4%. If we consider that in our country there are more than 65,000 cardiac arrests per year, it is possible to calculate a very high number of deaths related to this event, equal to about 46,000 every year.