Heart House News
A Heartfelt Tale
By Lauren Avellino Turton
South Jersey Magazine | March 2008
 Sanford J. Gips |
Dr. Sanford Gips fights for one's right to own a defibrillator.
Imagine this scenario: You're sitting down to a home-cooked family meal, chatting about your latest project at work. Your children are talking excitedly about the lessons they learned at school. The kids' grandparents have joined you for dinner and are sharing old stories from their childhoods. Then, in the blink of an eye, your lives are changed forever when your spouse has a heart attack.
Or, imagine this scenario: You're at your child's basketball game on a Friday night, cheering him on as you do every week. He's having a stellar game; he's the top-scoring player of the night. You're the proud parent smiling widely on the sidelines. His coach couldn't be more pleased with his performance. Then, suddenly, he collapses to the ground in cardiac arrest. Unbeknownst to you, he has an undiagnosed heart condition.
Such tragic events happen every single day, and often times they are deadly. Lives are shattered, when, in what seems like a split second, loved ones are taken from us unexpectedly and most often times way too soon. The statistics are frightening. According to the American Heart Association, sudden cardiac arrest claims an estimated 335,000 Americans each year. That's 1,000 lives each day, or one life every minute.
Dr. Sanford Gips has made it his life's mission to change that statistic. He is on a crusade to ultimately make automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, more widely available to everyone. "If you don't get CPR, you're dead," says Gips. "Your likelihood of surviving if you had CPR but not an AED shock is nine percent, whereas if you had CPR and an AED shock, your survival increases to 36 percent. So a four-fold increase. This is the key factor of survival for people in cardiac arrest."
To help spread his message, the Moorestown cardiologist created the "Save a Life Initiative" about a year ago, which is run by Gips' cardiology group, Cardiovascular Associates of the Delaware Valley (CADV), and provides free AED and CPR training throughout South Jersey. What inspired Gips to pilot this program were two very tragic, yet very real incidents. He recalls the fateful story of David Sheldon, a high school buddy from his home state of Ohio.
"It was a friend and classmate of mine who died of sudden cardiac death at age 17. This was doubly ironic and sad because, one, his brother also died a sudden cardiac death and, two, his father was a cardiologist," recalls Gips. These boys, he points out, had undiagnosed heart problems, yet their lives may have been saved if AEDs were on hand.
"Back then, without defibrillators, there's nothing you could do." Sitting at his house for a condolence call, he remembers of the children's father, "sitting in the library just seeing the walls of cardiology books and here's a guy who is powerless at the time to prevent what happened."
Dr. Gips also recalls the heartbreaking story of Steven Domalewski, who made national headlines in the summer of 2006. "It was the 12-year-old boy in Wayne, NJ. He was playing baseball and got hit in the chest with a baseball and had a cardiac arrest. He survived but he's brain damaged." The most unusual part of Domalewski's story, the doctor says, is that the ball hit the young pitcher at the exact millisecond between heartbeats, which caused an extremely rare condition called commotio cordis, basically a fatal heart rhythm.
"What would be a way to solve the problem is to have defibrillators available at places like football and baseball fields. If there are parents nearby or a coach or anyone that can use a defibrillator and do CPR, that kid could essentially have been immediately resuscitated and literally could have gotten up and finished the game. Instead, the kid is now in a persistent vegetative state."
Sandy, as Gips is known familiarly, says such incidents are a true wake-up call. "People don't even flinch to buy a $2000 television set. Here I was and I wouldn't spend $1000 on a defibrillator. I made a personal decision at the time that I was going to get a defibrillator for myself." That's when he made the personal decision to also start his "Save a Life Initiative," which he breaks down into three phases.
"The first phase was to convince all my partners that these are life-saving devices and that we should set an example by owning these devices." In the end, all 24 cardiologists in his group purchased personal AEDs. He says it was no easy feat convincing them to do so.
"You don't think you're going to need it. The fact of the matter is, people spend that kind of money on things you're not going to use all of the time, like burglar alarms. This [AED] is actually more likely to get use out of it than a burglar alarm at some time in your life, either using it on a friend, a relative, a parent."
Phase two, says Gips, is the public education campaign. "We provide basic education on how to do CPR and how to use AEDs. AEDs are designed so that a six-year-old child can use them. It takes about two minutes to learn how to use it. It's made to walk you through it."
The second it's opened, an automated voice gives instructions: "Begin by removing all clothing from the patient's chest."
Free seminars on CPR and AED use have been held so far in Cherry Hill and Washington Township, and CADV is planning upcoming demonstrations at health fairs throughout South Jersey.
The key to continue the "Save a Life Initiative," says Gips, is securing the proper funding. "Phase three is to raise money [from the hospital systems] to purchase the defibrillators for deserving non-profits. The kind of places you'd want these things anywhere large numbers of people would gather, like community centers, schools, senior citizen centers, golf courses, sport stadiums."
CADV has already donated AEDs to non-profit organizations, including Moorestown High School, where Gips' teenage son, Gordon, attends. Gips adds, "It's very important for the police departments to have them. In Moorestown, Cherry Hill and Haddon Heights, all police cars have AEDs, but most towns [police departments] in New Jersey do not. It's important because police cars are likely to get to your house much sooner than an ambulance." And the sooner, the better, he explains. The survival rate is 90 percent in the first minute of sudden cardiac arrest and decreases by about 10 percent with every minute that passes.
Robert Borda of South Philadelphia knows all too well how crucial time can be. The 66-year-old was at the movie theatre about a year ago when his heart stopped. "My wife thought I was asleep, then I didn't wake up. She yelled I need help!'" Coincidentally, Dr. George Hager, III, a surgeon from Virtua Hospital in South Jersey, was in that same movie theatre. "Dr. Hager jumped over the seat. His wife, who's a nurse, was also there. They started CPR. Then the squad came in and used a defibrillator. I was taken to the hospital and Dr. Gips did my catheterization. I feel great now," says Borda.
His wife, Carol, says the doctors couldn't believe he survived. "We believe in guardian angels. The doctors said, Your husband's story is a miracle. He had a one percent chance of survival.'"
For more information on purchasing a defibrillator or attending the "Save a Life Initiative" seminars, go to www.cadvhearthouse.com or call 856-546-3003.
Dr. Sandy Gips received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, is currently the Assistant Medical Director at Cooper Center for Interventional Cardiology, and is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at UMDNJ School of Medicine. He lives in Moorestown, NJ with his wife, Debra, 15-year-old son, Gordon, and 12-year-old daughter, Julia.
[Read this article online here.]