Cardiac arrest: Woman shares the sign she missed when she had cardiac arrest at 24

At the age of 24, Brittany Williams almost lost her life due to a cardiac arrest. She lost consciousness and was admitted to hospital. She woke up two days later.


Nine years later, Brittany has shared information pertaining to the health condition she had during cardiac arrest, and the symptoms which she ignored which nearly claimed her life.


In the TODAY show, Brittany has opened up on the life threatening condition she faced back then.

Talking about how the cardiac arrest started to develop in her, Brittany said she experienced numbness and tingling sensation in the left side of the body while she was at work.


Cardiac arrest is the sudden loss of the heart function as the heart stops beating abruptly. This leads to breathing issues and the person loses consciousness. Without prompt medical intervention or formal CPR the person may die due to cardiac arrest. One of the primary signs of cardiac arrest is unresponsiveness.


"I was at work, and all of a sudden the left side of my body went numb and tingly. I sat back and thought, 'Oh no, this doesn't feel right. This is not what I feel like on a day-to-day basis," she said in the show.

When the symptoms got worse she immediately searched the internet and zeroed in on three conditions: stroke, heart attack and cardiac arrest.


She immediately went to her boss, who dismissed her concerns. "You're 24 years old. You run five miles a day. You eat extremely healthy, that would never happen to you," Brittany remembers her boss saying.


"I trusted her."


"And three days later I collapsed in a restaurant in Times Square," she said.


During the seizure her parents were there with her who noticed that her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she just collapsed and became unresponsive.

When Brittany was admitted to the hospital it was found that she suffers from long QT syndrome, a condition that causes a fast and irregular heartbeat. Many people suffer from congenital long QT syndrome. Sometimes it is also caused due to medication. It often goes unnoticed and sometimes misdiagnosed as seizure or epilepsy.


Long QT syndrome is treated medically through medications like beta blockers and also by making changes to lifestyle.

The immediate symptoms of cardiac arrest are collapsing suddenly, no pulse, no breathing and loss of consciousness. Symptoms like chest discomfort, shortness of breath, weakness and fluttering of the heart occur before sudden cardiac arrest.


People should pay attention to minor signals of cardiac arrest, which often get missed, just like in Brittany's case. She experienced a tingling sensation in the body which she had ignored entirely based on the opinion of her boss.

It is very important to make sure that medical help reaches the person when he or she has cardiac arrest.


CPR or cardiopulmonary resuscitation gives compression to the heart which might help in creating an electrical impulse that makes the heart pump.

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CPR is done only when the person is not breathing. One should check whether the person is breathing or not before giving CPR. It is because the CPR compression might interfere with the normal heart beat. In CPR, one has to push hard and fast on the person's chest — about 100 to 120 pushes a minute. Then rescue breaths are given after every 30 compressions.

Never ignore the signs of heart problems. Timely medical intervention can stop the disease from progressing, or as in this case it can also detect a defect in the heart early.

Prompt action on the symptoms is the only way one can save oneself from this life threatening condition.

The common risk factors of cardiac arrest are:

Smoking
High blood pressure
High blood cholesterol
Obesity
Diabetes
Less physical activity
Family history
Low levels of potassium and magnesium