Saratoga High School event educates community about heart health – The Mercury News

Valentine’s Day is all about hearts, but is your heart really healthy? Another non-profit organization tried to help as many people in the Saratoga High School community answered that question on Saturday.

The Kyle J. Taylor Foundation has worked with 22 other nonprofit organizations across the US to bring free heart screenings and life-saving education to schools. This is the foundation’s second annual event in honor of National Youth Heart Screening Day. Founder and executive director Jennifer Sarmento started the nonprofit after her son, Kyle Taylor, died in Santa Cruz of sudden cardiac arrest in 2018.

“When he was in the ICU, it was the first time I heard sudden cardiac arrest. I didn’t know it was something, I didn’t know this could happen to children who look healthy,” said Sarmento. “We realized that if we didn’t know, many other families didn’t know, then we found out that just an EKG test could reveal what is wrong with his heart and that’s what motivated us to do this event.”

Sarmento said the biggest thing he took from doing this project is that heart problems in children are more common than people realize. Although it is reported that one in 300 children has an undiagnosed heart that puts them at risk of sudden cardiac arrest, he said the risk could be much greater. Of the 12,000 children Sarmento Foundation has examined, he said they found 115 with problems.

He added that the foundation often catches electrical problems with the heart, especially Wolf-Parkinson-White syndrome. It is a rare congenital heart condition characterized by increased electrical activity between the heart’s chambers, which can cause rapid, irregular heartbeats and palpitations. Although usually asymptomatic and manageable, it can lead to cardiac arrest or sudden death.

The event on the Saratoga High campus featured five stations, each led by volunteers with medical experience, such as students from the Saving Hearts Foundation at UC Berkeley and retired doctors. Participants had to fill out a form with some basic health information such as height and weight, and symptoms or family history of heart disease.

At the first station, volunteers took participants’ blood pressure. The heart must maintain a certain level of pressure in order to pump blood throughout the body. Low blood pressure may indicate low blood volume for a reason such as dehydration. However, high blood pressure is often a concern because it can damage blood vessels, disrupt blood circulation and put the heart, brain, kidneys and other parts of the body at risk.

The second station taught people how to perform hands-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, an emergency life-saving procedure to keep blood flowing when a person is unresponsive. Volunteers from UC Berkeley taught visitors about chest compressions by shaking, checking someone’s heartbeat or breathing and the difference between a sudden cardiac arrest and a heart attack.

The main difference between the two is that sudden cardiac arrest occurs due to an electrical malfunction that causes the heart to stop. Heart disease is a circulatory problem, caused by a blockage of blood flow. Symptoms of sudden cardiac arrest include sudden collapse without a heartbeat or breathing. Symptoms of a heart attack include chest pain, nausea, shortness of breath and sweating.

Volunteers also demonstrated how an automated external defibrillator, or AED, works. Because sudden cardiac arrest is an electrical issue, a defibrillator is needed to stop and restart the heart with an electric shock.

At the last two stations, volunteer nurses perform an electrocardiogram, or EKG, on participants, and medical doctors read their results. An EKG measures the heart’s electrical activity to detect conditions such as irregular heartbeats, heart damage or structural problems. Sarmento said that if something goes wrong during the examination, there are ultrasounds that have been established to further diagnose the problem.

Another doctor admitted that it is not easy to measure all the factors that affect overall health, adding that Saturday’s event allows for more tests that could save a person’s life down the line.