Israel | A 7-year-old boy suffered a heart attack in his home – and was saved thanks to the neighbors

About a week ago, the children of the Drucker family (all real names are kept in the system) from the settlement Kedumim were sleeping together in the MMD. The next morning Naomi, the mother of the family, woke up to the sound of soft crying and assumed that her daughter had woken up because she was afraid of the alarms. However, when she entered the room she realized that the sounds she heard were coming from Noam’s throat , her 7-year-old son.”I thought he was having a bad dream because he was making noises in his sleep,” she says in an interview with mako health. I tried to calm him down, caressed him and gently told him ‘good morning sweetie mom here’. He is admittedly a child who usually has trouble waking up, but this time I realized that it was a different story – I saw that he was not responding and suddenly started rolling his eyes.”

At this point Naomi realized that this was an emergency. “Yossi, my husband just came home from the reserves. I shouted to him that something had happened to the boy. We picked him up and took him out to the living room, lifted his legs and tried to wash his face – we tried to do everything we knew but we realized that it wasn’t working.” At the same time, Naomi called the MDA call center, where they began instructing them on how to act. Yossi realized that his son was not breathing and immediately began CPR operations. At the same time, Naomi asked her son, Noam’s brother, to run quickly to call her neighbor, Hadas Ruham, a medic and volunteer at the “Ihud Hatzala” And in MDA.

She describes the dramatic moments: “Within seconds the house went into a state of emergency. In between we had to go into the hospital to calm down the other brothers who were frightened by the situation and we asked them to stay there. Hadas joined my husband, changed him with massages and called all the rescue units in the settlement. Aterat Sharabi, the family’s neighbor, director of nursing at the health fund in the settlement, also arrived on the scene.

Among the drivers were Inbal Agassi, a nurse in charge of children’s triage at the Meir Medical Center, who has been volunteering for years at MDA, and her husband – Shmulik, a ‘Ihud Hatzla’ volunteer, a nursing student at the Nursing Academy, also in Meir. “When I arrived with them, I immediately joined the resuscitation operations. There was no pulse and he wasn’t breathing, I set up an infusion for him on the spot,” says Agassi. “Sharia Miletsky, a ‘Ihud Vah Tsela’ volunteer came with the defibrillator (from time to time), and we put Noam on a hand blower. We attached the stickers of the defibrillator and then Shmulik arrived and we just received an alert from the defibrillator ordering an electric shock,” she describes the stressful moment.

“It was just like in the movies. In one moment Noam’s chest went up and down again”

Inbal Agassi, nurse

Agassi explains that the staff instructed everyone around to stay away, and then the market was given. “It was just like in the movies, in one moment Noam’s chest went up and down and then we realized that he was back to life. We put an oxygen mask on him, we saw that the pulse was coming back and after two minutes an intensive care unit arrived and he was taken to Meir.”

According to her, they now understand that Noam suffered from a fatal arrhythmia. “His heart actually stopped working, until the moment when the market put it back into action. I have a lot of experience in pediatric emergency medicine, and I know how rare such a case is. The chance that a child of this age will undergo such a dramatic cardiac event, when he has no known background, is very small, And the fact that he managed to get out of it is amazing. The fact that it’s a boy I know from the settlement even increased the stress and the worry. I’m glad that Shmulik was at home, he served in the reserves for many months, and came to the area for experience in a hospital as part of his nursing studies.” Agassi notes that as part of his position, Shmulik is responsible, among other things, for placing defibrillator devices in the settlement. “This case proves what we already know – that this is a life-saving device, especially when it comes to remote settlements.”

 

 

 

Fatal arrhythmia – “every second is critical”

Dr. Ehud Rosenblum, director of the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Department at the Meir Medical Center of the Klalit Group, explains about the rare condition that endangered Noam’s life: “It is a fatal arrhythmia that must be treated as soon as possible and in the right way to prevent death. During the disorder, oxygen does not reach the tissues and organs of the body, including the brain, so every second is critical. The most important thing in such a situation is the response of an electric shock, the purpose of which is to regulate the heart rate. If there is no such possibility, massages should be started in order to replace the action of the heart until the market is given.”

According to him, the chances of survival of children who experience a cardiac arrest outside the walls of the hospital are very low and are estimated to be below 10%. The fact that Noam manages to recover from the situation is also rare.

Dr. Rosenblum also explains that the availability of defibrillators in the field is critical for saving lives. “In recent years, we have seen legislative initiatives on the subject and projects by rescue organizations, companies and municipalities working to make these life-saving devices available in many places. It is important to note that these are easy-to-operate devices that are not intended for use by medical personnel, and in fact anyone can use them to save lives. The fact that the father started heart massage alongside the excellent activity of Inbal and the rescue team in the field, and thanks to the defibrillator that Shmulik made sure to distribute in the settlement – led to the child’s life being saved.”

“I can’t get the image of the people giving him massages out of my head,” says his father Yossi. “I saw his little body crushed and I feared the worst. It happens in a moment, and you have no prior preparation, but I knew in my heart that this was not the end. I saw myself taking him to a hospital and that this story did not end in our living room.”

 

 

 

His mother Naomi adds that this is a healthy and strong child. “The night before, he was doing cartwheels in the living room and playing ball. I have no doubt that there was supreme supervision here, and we were blessed with messengers to rescue him. My husband was at home, Shmulik was at home, I heard the voices from the children’s room and did not delay, they all arrived in seconds and acted in sync. It is important for us to thank For everyone, and for the Creator of the world. One of the lessons we internalized from those stressful moments is that despite the pressure and panic at the difficult moment, it is important to act calmly, to come to our senses and perform massages. I think this is an action that every parent should know how to do.”

Dr. Daganit Adam Cohen, director of pediatric intensive care at the center, states that Noam is now hospitalized in the pediatric intensive care unit, undergoing close monitoring and receiving drug treatment, as well as a comprehensive investigation into the source of the arrhythmia he experienced.