Biosensors to Detect Sudden Cardiac Arrest

“Cardiac arrest”—when the heart stops beating—is a critical public health
issue in Canada and globally. There are approximately 60,000 sudden cardiac arrests per year in Canada.
Despite large-scale efforts to improve survival over the last 30 years, approximately 95% of cardiac arrest
patients will not survive. The single most influential factor predicting cardiac arrest survival is recognition
by a bystander witness who can alert emergency medical services. However, 75% of cardiac arrest
patients are unwitnessed—these patients experience delays between the onset of cardiac arrest and
discovery, and thus only 2% survive. New approaches are needed to rapidly detect cardiac arrest and
facilitate a timely professional response. Preliminary modelling work using Canadian data suggests that if
all previously unwitnessed cardiac arrest cases were detected by technology at the time of onset, overall
survival would more than double.