Rapid City Fire Department promoting app that can save lives

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) - On January 2, millions of Americans watched as a professional football player was successfully resuscitated on the field after experiencing sudden cardiac arrest.

Since a cardiac emergency can happen anywhere at any time, the Rapid City Fire Department is promoting an app that can help save lives.

The PulsePoint app sends alerts any time the fire department or paramedics are called out, including for sudden cardiac arrest which kills about one thousand people a day. However, the sooner help arrives, the better the patient’s chance of survival.

“According to a number of the studies that have been performed, it may be as low as 40% of people in sudden cardiac arrest that get immediate CPR. Survival rates nationwide for sudden cardiac arrest are less than 10%” said Jim Bussell, firefighter paramedic with the RCFD.

Rapid City’s PulsePoint app currently has more than 2 thousand users, and more than 700 have CPR alerts turned on.

“But the primary piece of this app was the CPR alerts. In order to get hands on the chest faster. We found that doing CPR early, right away after that sudden cardiac arrest, increases survivability significantly,” fire chief Jason Culberson said.

Users do not need to be CPR certified or trained, they just have to be willing to perform CPR on anyone in need.

Culberson also said “so please, download the app, turn on CPR alerts, and save a life. You never know, the life saved, may be yours.”

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