Michael Jackson's Death Educates Public

How can you tell when someone has transcended his/her occupation and is having an impact on people in seemingly unrelated areas?

It varies from person to person, but in the days since his death I've seen a couple of ways that Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop," has had an influence outside of his sphere.

One indicator is relatively benign. At a website that I visit almost daily, RealClearPolitics.com, I have seen links to articles at newspaper websites around the world about the global gloom caused by Jackson's death and retrospectives of his career. These are topics that are being covered, either by staffers or wire service accounts, just about everywhere - but what makes them unique, in this context, is the fact that RealClearPolitics.com included some of their links on its site. Ordinarily, articles about entertainers - be they singers or actors or athletes - are not mentioned there.

Another website I visit frequently, Wikipedia, has a list of current news topics on its main page. This list is always accompanied by a picture that usually changes every 24 hours - but Jackson's picture seems to have taken something resembling a permanent residence there.

In a more important way, though, the manner of Jackson's death is educating people. While the cause of his death has yet to be determined, Jackson may inspire others to learn more and, thus, be better prepared for a life-threatening emergency.

I have found it astonishing, as I have watched the TV reports, how many people, particularly medical journalists who should know better, have treated the terms "heart attack" and "cardiac arrest" as interchangeable.

In fact, they are not.

A heart attack occurs when the blood supply to part of the heart is interrupted. The heart itself continues to beat.

A cardiac arrest occurs when the heart stops functioning, causing blood flow to all parts of the body to stop. It can occur as the result of an untreated heart attack, but it is not the same thing as a heart attack.

For that matter, "heart failure" is not the same thing, either. Heart failure, in which the pumping of the heart is diminished, can be the result of a heart attack, but that is not always true.

In both a heart attack and cardiac arrest, prompt medical treatment is crucial for survival, but, because cardiac arrest means blood is no longer flowing to all parts of the body, a cardiac arrest patient requires swifter treatment. It is estimated that, for every minute that a cardiac arrest patient goes without treatment, the chances of being revived drop by 10%.

If a patient is left untreated for only a few minutes, brain injury is likely to occur because the brain is no longer receiving the oxygen it gets from blood. That certainly seems to be what happened with Jackson, as subsequent reports indicated he had lapsed into a coma.

Cardiac arrest is considered the same as clinical death. Most fatal conditions have periods, however brief, when reversible cardiac arrest is at least theoretically possible. A heart attack, therefore, is one of many conditions that can lead to a cardiac arrest - and, if left untreated, it is likely to cause one. The results of tests ordered by the coroner following Jackson's autopsy will answer a lot of questions about why his cardiac arrest occurred, but, in the absence of other risk factors, already there is speculation about the role of prescription drug interaction.

"If a death from cardiac arrest seems too small and sudden a death for ... the biggest superstar in the world," wrote Stephen Thomas Erlewine for AllMusic.com, "it's because no death would seem appropriate for the self-proclaimed King of Pop."

That is, possibly, too poetic. In fact, there is nothing small or insignificant about a cardiac arrest. The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association estimates that an American dies of sudden cardiac arrest every two minutes. That's more than 700 Americans in every 24-hour period and more than 125,000 Americans by the time of Jackson's death.

Nothing small about those numbers.

Perhaps a greater understanding of cardiac arrest will be Jackson's parting gift to mankind. At the very least, hopefully there will be fewer people who make the mistake of confusing "heart attack" and "cardiac arrest."

Sources

Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, "In Tribute: Michael Jackson,"AllMusic.com

Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association

Related Links

American Heart Association: Heart Attack

Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation