Young dad a 'lucky one' after suffering cardiac arrest

Mosgiel family Bradley and Jessica Stratton, with children Maisie and Otis. Photo / Supplied

The date February 13, 2021, is etched on Bradley Stratton's mind.

That day, while playing with his then 3-year-old son, Otis, Stratton collapsed.

Otis called out to his mother, Jessica, who performed CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) on her husband until emergency service workers arrived and took over.

Stratton was 33.

He cannot remember anything from two days before the cardiac arrest until two or three days afterwards.

When he woke up, he thought he had been in a car accident because of the marks across his chest, which he thought had been caused by a seatbelt.

They were burns caused by the defibrillator used to revive him.

His heart had gone into ventricular fibrillation and needed 10 shocks to restart a normal rhythm.

He was kept in the intensive care unit for several days.

When he woke up he was moved to the high-dependency unit, where he started his road to recovery.

Despite spending a lot of time in the cardiology ward undergoing tests, he still has no explanation for what caused his cardiac arrest.

He said this week he was almost fully recovered, but there were still some reminders of how close he came to death.

His chest had been fitted with an internal defibrillator, which monitored his heart rate, ready to deliver an electric shock if he had another cardiac arrest.

The brush with death had changed his perspective on life, he said.

The family had moved home from Auckland to Mosgiel, where both he and his wife grew up, for the slower pace of life and to have more family time.

If not for the rapid arrival of emergency services and his wife's knowledge of CPR, he would have been a "goner", Sutton said.

Ambulance officers and the fire crew who saved him had visited him during his recovery and said they could not believe he survived, Stratton said.

He recognised he was one of the lucky ones.

A St John spokeswoman said between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, more than 2000 people were treated by ambulance services for cardiac arrest events.

Only 25 per cent of those made it to hospital alive.

St John clinical director Tony Smith said cardiac arrest was one of the leading causes of death in New Zealand, and survival rates had decreased slightly since 2020.

The decline was likely because of Covid-related disruptions, and it was important to encourage awareness about the importance of CPR and defibrillation because bystanders could save lives, he said.

The three steps people needed to follow upon witnessing a cardiac arrest were to call for an ambulance, start CPR and use a defibrillator, he said.