Cardiac arrest in the young: rare but possible

Young people do not have cardiac chest pains, it is just a panic attack, drink or drugs, attention seeking, or trying to get out of sports—this is what we may believe when we get a 999 call to any teenager who calls because of chest pains or a collapse or faint.

We are led to believe that young people and babies have not yet begun to damage their heart with smoking, long–term alcohol use or general lifestyle abuse. Their heart is under warranty and only goes wrong under extreme and unusual conditions. As a paramedic, I have to admit, this is how things are often perceived and how I used to think myself.

This is not due to ignorance but a lack of education. In training school, ambulance staff are taught to deal with many extremes of traumatic situations and medical conditions in a very short space of time. From childbirth to simple or multisystem trauma, to strokes and heart attacks, to psychiatric patients.