OXNARD : Council Asked to OK Purchase of Defibrillators

It was a scene that paramedics dread.

An Oxnard man had suffered a heart attack. And as the man’s teen-aged daughter watched, paramedics worked in vain to save his life.

“The look of agony on his daughter’s face is still with me,” said Oxnard Fire Battalion Chief Haywood Merricks, a firefighter for 18 years.

Today, the Oxnard City Council will decide whether to buy emergency medical equipment that firefighters say might have saved the man’s life.

“Maybe that’s the last time we’ll have to go through that,” Merricks said.

The council will decide whether to spend $53,000 to buy seven heart defibrillators and train firefighters how to use them. Training would be provided by a physician, nurse and paramedic from St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard.

Paramedics use defibrillators to stabilize weak and irregular hearts by placing the machine’s pads on the chest and sending an electrical jolt to the heart.

As many as two of every five people who experience weak and irregular heartbeats during a heart attack could be saved by the prompt use of defibrillator machines, Merricks said.

Critical to the success of the emergency medical treatment is the fact that all Oxnard residents live within a six-minute response time from the city’s six fire stations. Defibrillation is most effective if performed within six minutes, Merricks said.

Chances for surviving a heart attack go up if paramedics can administer medication and life support such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation to a patient within 12 minutes, he added.

“The success rate with CPR alone is not that great,” Merricks said. But he added that the use of defibrillators improves the chances for survival dramatically.