Quick-thinking and a defibrillator helped save the life of a man during a basketball game. Reed Matson was playing a game with a group of men at the Friends High school gym when one of the men collapsed and went in to cardiac arrest.
Of the 50 man there nobody knew CPR and despite his friends efforts, the man became unresponsive.
Matson ran into the school lobby and brought back a defibrillator shocking the victim back into consciousness. EMT's took the man to the hospital and he survived. Matson said what happened that night at the gym spurred him into action.
"There was probably 50 grown men between the two gyms, and not one person was trained in chest compressions, CPR, or how to use a defibrillator in the entire gym, so that kind of prompted me the next week to sign up for a CPR class with the AHA and get my CPR certification," says Watson.
Matson received the American Hero Award from the American Heart Association for his work.
An American Heart Association spokesperson says 350,000 people go into cardiac arrest outside of the hospital every ear. Only 10% survive partly because so few people know how to give CPR.
