An eighth-grader at Dacheng Junior High School in Nantou County’s Puli Township (埔里) yesterday celebrated his birthday after a near-death experience caused by sudden cardiac arrest, with his mother thanking those who brought her son back to life by quickly following resuscitation procedures.
The teenager, identified only by his surname, Chen (陳), to protect his privacy, is known as a healthy student who is passionate about dancing. On May 26, he suddenly lost consciousness while in class and had no pulse when the school nurse reached him.
The nurse performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the student and was joined by the school’s principal and other teachers, who continued the emergency procedure until an ambulance arrived.
The paramedics affixed an automated external defibrillator (AED) monitoring patch to Chen’s chest, which showed that the boy was suffering from ventricular fibrillation, an uncoordinated contraction of the cardiac muscle that causes heart ventricles to vibrate instead of contract, and suggested an electric shock of 120 joules.
“CPR and the AED were successful in saving Chen from death,” Chang Jeng-cheng (張正成), head of the intensive care unit at the China Medical University Hospital Children’s Hospital in Taichung, said during yesterday’s birthday party at the hospital.
When a healthy teenager suffers a sudden cardiac arrest, ventricular fibrillation should immediately be considered as a possible cause, Chang said, adding that an AED should be used at once if possible.
The most efficient way to resuscitate a sudden cardiac arrest victim is CPR followed by the use of an AED, Chang said, adding that school teachers and staff should be trained in the emergency procedures.
An AED is an electronic device that can automatically diagnose the life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia, and can be used to deliver life-saving defibrillation.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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