14
W
hen Australian chil-
dren’s entertainer
Greg Page – better
known as the “yellow
Wiggle” – slumped
to his knees and
then collapsed as he
walked off stage after
a performance last month, an off-duty
nurse, two quick-thinking bystanders anda nearby defibrillator saved his life.
The Wiggle was flatlining. A heart attack
caused by a blocked coronary artery had
put him into sudden cardiac arrest. He was
minutes from death when Sydney nurse
Grace Jones joined the band’s drummer and
a bystander in performing CPR. “Then,” she
told Australian media, “someone handed
me a defibrillator.” Jones delivered three
shocks with the device before paramedicsarrived.
The dramatic public incident mirrored
another shocking collapse of a high-profile
person in New Zealand only a fortnight ear-
lier, when harness reinsman Ricky May, 61,
suddenly fell backwards in the sulky as he
drove the leading runner in a feature race
at the Omakau race meeting on January 2.
His upper body flopped apparently lifeless
out the back of the cart as the horse paced
on, before May fell to the track, hor-
rifying picnicking racegoers and those
watching the race live on television.
May, too, had had a cardiac arrest and,
like Page, was revived by bystanders- young physiotherapist and harness
driver Ellie Barron, who broke May’s
ribs with the vigour of her CPR, and
two doctors who restarted his heart
with a defibrillator on course.
CHANGE O
Major advances have been made in the treatment of heart
disease, from game-changing drugs for type 2 diabetes,
to revolutionary new pacemakers and a rethink of the
usefulness of bypass surgery and stenting. by DONNA CHISHOLM
GE
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HEART DISEASE TREATMENT
Cardiac arrest:
“yellow Wiggle”
Greg Page on
stage in Los
Angeles in 2006,
and in hospital.