kingcheetah
Hall of Fame
A few weeks ago, I participated in a social doubles event at my club, and a player had a cardiac arrest during the warmup. We were going through the normal warm up progression(baseline shots, alternating turns at net) on half of a court, and then the guy I was hitting with (probably in his 60s, but plays a fair amount of tennis) bent over with his elbows on his knees facing the back tarp-- I couldn't really tell if he was winded, his back was bothering him, or he was looking for something like a contact lens or a dampener. Another rally later, he does the same thing. Never did he touch his chest.
The pro leading the event could see that I was trying to figure out what was happening, and switched places with me to check on him. Then the guy I'd been hitting with walks over to the bench. A veteran coach that has been in the profession for a long time had seen all of this, and was already on the phone with emergency personnel. He came down to the court, still on the phone. I'd worked at the club previously, so I knew we needed to send a different person to notify the front desk that emergency personnel had been called and to contact security as well. I ran off court to deal with that, and almost instantly the player lost consciousness(I found this out when I returned to the court) We sent a different club member to look for medical professionals that might be in the building, while I waited to meet the EMT team. In this short time, the man had gone into cardiac arrest, and another player (a MD in research) began CPR while others located an AED, and we found a Nurse Practitioner (that works in Cardiology, of all things)
EMT response time was fast(they arrived as the AED was being set up), and the man's heart was restarted before they left the facility, although he was far from stable. He did make it to the hospital, and has recognition of family members (I haven't heard additional updates since) I later found out that the survival rate of a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital is 15%.
While we were fortunate to have a professional with intuition and medical professionals there, as well as equipment and a fast-responding team of EMTs, I think it was an eye-opener for the importance of being familiar with what to do in emergency situations.
The pro leading the event could see that I was trying to figure out what was happening, and switched places with me to check on him. Then the guy I'd been hitting with walks over to the bench. A veteran coach that has been in the profession for a long time had seen all of this, and was already on the phone with emergency personnel. He came down to the court, still on the phone. I'd worked at the club previously, so I knew we needed to send a different person to notify the front desk that emergency personnel had been called and to contact security as well. I ran off court to deal with that, and almost instantly the player lost consciousness(I found this out when I returned to the court) We sent a different club member to look for medical professionals that might be in the building, while I waited to meet the EMT team. In this short time, the man had gone into cardiac arrest, and another player (a MD in research) began CPR while others located an AED, and we found a Nurse Practitioner (that works in Cardiology, of all things)
EMT response time was fast(they arrived as the AED was being set up), and the man's heart was restarted before they left the facility, although he was far from stable. He did make it to the hospital, and has recognition of family members (I haven't heard additional updates since) I later found out that the survival rate of a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital is 15%.
While we were fortunate to have a professional with intuition and medical professionals there, as well as equipment and a fast-responding team of EMTs, I think it was an eye-opener for the importance of being familiar with what to do in emergency situations.