A LIFESAVING app will be launched in Southampton today which will tell people where to find the nearest accessible defibrillator.

South Central Ambulance Services (SCAS) has developed the free Save a Life App which has information on the 2,300 external defibrillators in the region.

It also contains videos which demonstrate how to carry out cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on adults, children and infants.

The app, which is iOS and Android compatible, has been developed for SCAS by O2.

It has be designed to allow every ambulance trust in the country to upload the location of all their defibrillators if they choose to do so, which could be the first national register of the devices which can deliver a lifesaving electric charge to the chest of someone who has suffered a cardiac arrest.

Professor Charles Deakin, assistant medical director for SCAS and a member of the European Resuscitation Council, who advised on the development of the app, said: “Sudden cardiac arrest is a leading cause of premature death, but with immediate treatment many lives can be saved.

“The quicker that the disorganised electrical rhythm – called ventricular fibrillation – that causes a sudden cardiac arrest can be treated by defibrillation, the greater the chance of a successful resuscitation.

"Seconds really do count so by using the Save a Life App, someone can save many seconds, if not minutes, in using a defibrillator on a patient even before an ambulance arrives.

"This gives the person having the cardiac arrest a greater chance of survival.”

As reported in the Echo Sam Mangoro, who was 16 and a student at The Mountbatten School in Romsey suffered a cardiac arrest during a PE lesson in 2014.

Sam said: “Thanks to the quick thinking of my teachers, one of whom started giving me CPR immediately whilst another went to get the school’s AED, I was one of the few lucky ones and survived an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.”

Hampshire Chronicle:

Sam’s experience prompted a successful Echo campaign which saw scores of defibrillators, and training in how to use them, supplied to schools.

He added: “I’d urge everyone to download the app now now and familiarise yourself with how to do CPR – or better still go on a course to learn it – so that if you came across a friend, family member or complete stranger in cardiac arrest you could have the ability to help save their life.”

Today’s launch is the latest development in SCAS’ Start a Heart campaign which is designed to increase the chances of people in our region surviving a heart attack or cardiac arrest by:

1. Always dialling 999 first

2. Checking if someone is breathing

3. If not breathing, starting CPR immediately

4. If more than one person with the patient, send someone to get an AED from nearby if available whilst the other person continues CPR

5. Keep performing CPR until help arrives

The Save a Life app can be downloaded free for iOS and Android devices via links on the SCAS website here: www.scas.nhs.uk/savealife.

The register will be constantly updated and SCAS would like to hear about any new defibrillators, accessible to the public, which are installed. Information can be sent to communications@scas.nhs.uk.

In the UK, there are 188,000 hospital episodes attributed to heart attack each year and around 30 per cent of heart attacks are fatal.

On average across the SCAS region, the ambulance service is called to attend five patients suffering either a cardiac arrest or heart attack every day.

There are more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the UK each year and fewer than one in 10 people survive.

In Norway, where CPR is taught, as part one in four survive. in 4.

In the year to April 2016, SCAS had the highest survival rate of all England ambulance trusts for patients leaving hospital following a cardiac arrest – 13.6 per cent. The average was 8.3 per cent.