Women fall sick faster from cardiac arrest than men, have a worse chance of receiving care from a bystander and experience diminished odds of survival, say cardiologists. A woman in cardiac arrest will collapse suddenly, and in that period, there will be no breathing or movement. When someone with cardiac arrest is connected to an automated external defibrillator or AED, the device looks for shockable initial rhythm or SIR, an abnormal electrical rhythm that is associated with cardiac arrest. Conventional wisdom holds that out-of-hospital cardiac arrest occurs without previous contact with the health-care system. But the Ontario study found that more than one in four patients were assessed in the emergency department in the 90 days before their cardiac arrest.

Source: CBC News May 23, 2019 08:00 UTC