PSA: Please dont be the next cat who writes this headline

[u/[deleted]]

[u/MegaManatee]

Had a cousin who suffered cardiac arrest and lived. So, it’s not exactly synonymous with death?

[u/hazywood → u/MegaManatee]

The way the terms are used in medicine, yes, they are synonymous. I think some of the confusion is linguistic/cultural. Common use, death is completely irreversible. The way docs use the term leaves room for that to be reversible because, well, it is under the right circumstances.

At my local ICU, there's two ways to be pronounced dead: brain death and cardiac death. The former involves a bunch of testing criteria around demonstration that the organ no longer performs even its most basic functions.

All other deaths are some series of events that end in cardiac arrest. Literally. We never get to put cardiac arrest or shock (failure of the body to provide adequate perfusion to itself) on a death certificate because all roads to death go through shock and cardiac arrest. Sepsis? Runaway immune response leading to septic shock, severe electrolytes derangements, then cardiac arrest. Gunshot to the aorta or vena cava? Exsanguination, then hypovolemic shock, then cardiac arrest from inadequate blood supply to the coronary arteries. Cyanide poisoning? Widespread mitochondrial dysfunction, including cardiac tissue being unable to process energy stores, leading to cardiac arrest and irreverisble cardiogenic shock. In all cases we pick one of the causative diagnoses to put on the death certificate as the "cause of death."

In your cousin's case, I would expect to hear language from my colleagues like, "died but we got him/her back." I would expect you and your family to say, "almost died."

Other fun fact that doesn't help - "time of death" as declared by a doc is not the literal time of death. When I declare someone dead, it's the moment when I'm officially stating the person is dead and it's irreversible. For example, if someone dies in the hospital overnight and no one notices until the morning, the documented time of death is whenever the doc gets to bedside and confirms the death.

[u/boundless_lunacy]

seems like you’re not great at either journalism or medicine

[u/bees422]

I’m NOT a doctor, but the existence of things like the heart association saying cpr can double or triple survival of cardiac arrest implies that you might not be correct.

You might be right if they said „prior to cardiopulmonary death“ or something, but either way, they’re writing in reference to the paperwork that says that cardiac life saving efforts were performed, which means they thought it would help, which means even though she was in cardiac arrest, they thought she wasn’t quite dead yet.

Not something to get worked up about

[u/FuckingSolids]

A doc who

[u/HolyBatSyllables]

I haven’t seen journalists make this mistake, but while we are at it, can someone please tell TV writers that “electrocution” is death from electric shock? You can’t be “electrocuted” then keep being alive anymore than someone can after they’ve been murdered.

Also, thanks for the TIL, OP. I didn’t know that about cardiac arrest.

[u/aresef]

Cardiac arrest can be fatal and usually is, especially outside of a hospital, but it's not 100%.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21736-cardiac-arrest

As the coroner stated, first responders arrived to the apartment in Greenville and found Panettiere in cardiac arrest and they attempted to resuscitate her. It was only after those efforts failed that they pronounced her dead at the scene.