Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A year following the successful, life-saving efforts to revive Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin following his cardiac arrest on-field, efforts to substantially increase community accessibility to CPR and AED classes continues to broaden.
Dr. Leslie Bisson, University at Buffalo sports medicine surgeon and Buffalo Bills medical director, knows that NFL teams are well-equipped to handle someone going into cardiac arrest. The same can not necessarily be said for bystanders of amateur sporting events in the community and at local schools.
With strong interest in local communities learning life-saving practices given what happened to Hamlin, coupled with strong partnerships with athletic training outreach programs, Dr. Bisson worked to receive a $300,000 grant last October from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation to help address barriers to bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation/automated external defibrillator (CPR/AED) training in underserved communities in Buffalo.
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"What we know is that there's a community disparity between areas where people will get CPR if they if they have a sudden cardiac arrest, and the other areas where they're not as likely to get CPR," Dr. Bisson tells WBEN.
"We've got a lot of relationships with athletic trainers and the athletic directors of the [school] sports teams and we've successfully brought hands-only CPR training into those schools. What we're seeking to do with this grant is to expand that for a couple more sports seasons, for those spring sports season in 2024 and the fall sports season in 2024."
In addition, the doctor says they plan on using funds to train around 80 members of the community to become CPR instructors.
"We're recruiting from a group of medical students and nursing students, the Buffalo Black Nurses," explains Dr. Bisson. "A large number of them are going to become certified CPR trainers. We'll be able to work with the American Heart Association to instruct people and help them to become certified in CPR. Those instructors that are going to be trained will be the ones that will be delivering the hands-only CPR training to students, student-athletes and their family members in many of the public schools in Western New York, particularly the ones in the historically underserved communities."
The goal? Train 8000 student-athletes and their family members in hands-only CPR this year.
"We were successful at getting close to 3000 in the fall, and we're going to more than double that this year."
The truth is evident for Dr. Bisson. He tells WBEN that roughly 350,000 people suffer an out-of-hospital-cardiac-arrest event each year, according to the American Heart Association, but only about 10% survive. If CPR is performed immediately, the individual’s chance of survival can double, even triple.
The "Damar Hamlin Effect" or phenomenon has brought great awareness to these facts, which is why Dr. Bisson believes it is essential that they continue to teach while the interest and attention remains strong.
"I had been involved in a couple other high profile athlete rescues. Richard Richard Zednik, when he got cut while playing for the Florida Panthers against the Buffalo Sabres, and Kevin Everett when he had his on-field paralysis that was then successfully reversed by some early stabilization and some early surgical treatment.
Those two prior experiences caused me to understand that people would be paying attention to these things afterwards, that there'd be this period of time where they're focusing on this. As I started kind of processing what had happened after we resuscitated Damar, and in the days when he was in the intensive care unit, it just sort of came together. I thought, 'You know, people are going to be paying attention to CPR, and they're going to be listening to what the Bills training staff and medical staff have to say about it. So why not take that opportunity and try to improve the health of our community by making sure that as many people as possible know what to do?'"
Dr. Bisson notes that classes have already been taught in Western New York schools such as Lockport High School, Cheektowaga Schools, Maryvale Schools and Cleveland Hill in addition to multiple schools in the Buffalo Public School District.
According to UB, the team divide CPR training into a series of incrementally advanced steps. The first is the most basic, a 90-second introduction to CPR, followed by small groups with an instructor where individuals get to practice with mannequins. The next stage links participants to instructional videos and certification courses. The final stage is CPR certification.
Using this method, the UB physicians and trainers have been able to train groups of as many as 400 participants in as little as 40 minutes during high school pre-season athletic meetings.
"We resuscitated Damar, really, with some trained people that had some simple equipment and a plan," says Dr. Bisson. "The simple equipment being a cell phone and access to an AED. The plan is this simple. If you see somebody that collapses, call 911. Push up and down on their chest and send somebody for an AED. Once the AED arrives, open it and it will tell you what to do. As many people that are out there that know that or have heard that right now. You're now empowered to start doing something if you see somebody have a cardiac arrest."
You can hear the full interview with Dr. Bisson in the player above.