As he left home to make the long journey to see his beloved team Nottingham Forest play Brighton, Bob Whetton heard Elaine, his wife of 42 years, shout: “It would be death if you.” all those football games going south. . ‘
In fact, it saved his life.
After a long career in the public sector, including 16 years as finance director of Lincolnshire Council, Bob, 73, enjoyed a retirement of sorts due to his love of football.
In his youth he played for a Sunday morning team. He then became manager of an amateur club and has been a season ticket holder for Nottingham Forest for 32 years.
After a long career in the public sector, including 16 years as finance director of Lincolnshire Council, Bob, 73, enjoyed a retirement of sorts due to his love of football. He is on the right with Professor Rob Galloway (left).
On his way to the Amex Stadium, home of Brighton, on that cold Tuesday a few weeks ago, he drove through Wembley to meet with the Women’s FA to discuss how to improve women’s participation in football.
The meeting at Wembley was the reason he was a little late for the 7.30pm kick-off. He rushed into the stadium and had chest pains for a few seconds. Then his next memory, lying on the tarmac in front of the stadium, was a team of medics shouting instructions to check his blood pressure and consciousness.
The searing pain in his ribs made him think he had been attacked – in fact, it was bruising from the chest compressions administered by members of the St. John Ambulance, who literally just saved him.
He went into cardiac arrest and was essentially dead until simple first aid skills—and an automated defibrillator kept in a public area of the stadium—brought him back to life.
Soon Bob’s thoughts turned to the two loves of his life. “Are we still losing?” he asked, followed by, “Did you tell my wife; is she okay?’
I know this because I was the doctor on call that night as part of the Amex Stadium medical team and arrived shortly after Bob was “shocked” and revived. I was so proud that our team saved his life together.
As an A&E consultant I also know that Bob was one of the lucky ones – lucky to have his cardiac arrest in this place. Around 30,000 people in the UK suffer cardiac arrest each year, but only one in 20 or five per cent survive.
On his way to the Amex Stadium, home of Brighton, he drove through Wembley on that cold Tuesday a few weeks ago to meet with the Women’s FA and discuss ways to improve women’s participation in football
In cardiac arrest, the heart suddenly stops working and can no longer pump blood. It is often confused with a heart attack (caused by a lack of blood due to a clot in the blood vessels that supply the heart).
About 15 percent of heart attacks lead to cardiac arrest, either through direct damage to the heart or because the damaged part of the heart is the electrical circuit that then fails; essentially, the heart “vibrates” – medically known as ventricular fibrillation.
Another cause of cardiac arrest can be a large clot in the lungs.
But a large number of cardiac arrests are caused directly by electrical problems in the heart. The most famous example of this was Manchester United midfielder Christian Eriksen, who suffered a cardiac arrest during a EURO match for Denmark in June 2021 and recovered in shock.
Bob was happy for three reasons. He collapsed near people who knew how to perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and had the type of cardiac arrest that affects the heart’s electricity, that is, responds to a shock from a defibrillator. But importantly, he crashed near such a device.
He was the seventh person to suffer cardiac arrest at the Amex since it opened in 2011. Not only did all seven survive, but like Bob they enjoyed a high quality of life afterward.
Bob was then taken to the Royal Sussex Hospital in Brighton, where a blocked heart artery was opened and he was fitted with an internal defibrillator to prevent future cardiac arrest. Within a few days he returned home and is now well and back to his old self.
“I am so grateful for the intervention of Brighton and everyone who helped, from the Club Stewards, St John Ambulance, Paramedics, Mass Doctor, Royal Sussex County Hospital NHS A&E and the cardiology teams. If I didn’t have that support, I wouldn’t be here,” he says.
So why can a football stadium have a 100 percent survival rate when the usual rate is only 5 percent?
First Bob was revived when he went into cardiac arrest.
In Bob’s case it was carried out by members of the St. John Ambulance; but anyone can do it and it’s easy to learn. When you see someone has collapsed, the first thing you should do is look for signs of life. If not, call 999 and start CPR.
Some people hesitate to try it because of the “kiss of life” idea. Even the name – cardiopulmonary resuscitation – is a problem because people think you have to resuscitate the lungs as well.
But that’s just not the case. The latest evidence shows that it’s only the push-ups that the public should be doing. Push down firmly and quickly (about the tempo of the Bee Gees song Stayin’ Alive) and to a depth of one third of your chest. (People are also worried about cracked ribs — they don’t have to be. I’d rather live with a few healing broken ribs than die with a perfect chest.) The sooner CPR starts, the better the survival rate — on five minutes without CPR, the heart stops fibrillating, making successful CPR much less likely.
By performing compressions, you take on the heart’s role of pumping blood through the body and keeping the brain alive. For every minute of delay in starting CPR, the survival rate decreases by 8 percent.
Patients with all types of cardiac arrest benefit from CPR. As you do, the heart stays alive. For those types of cardiac arrests where the electricity is disrupted and the heart fibrillates, the main treatment is to shock the heart and get it back to a normal rhythm.
And you want to get defibrillation as soon as possible—if CPR is started right away and a defibrillator is used right away, the chances of survival after cardiac arrest from an electrical fault can be as high as 50 to 75 percent. Again, you don’t need training – automatic defibrillators have a “voice” that tells you what to do. All you need is access to one of these life-saving devices.
Unfortunately, only three per cent of cardiac arrests in the UK are treated with a public defibrillator as it is not as widespread as it should be.
If you don’t know where your nearest defibrillator is, 999 staff will be able to guide you.
At Amex Stadium we have 11 defibrillators – one can be deployed to a patient anywhere in the stadium within two to three minutes of a collapse.
Martin Houghton-Brown, general manager of St. John Ambulance and a volunteer first responder, told me, “It’s amazing to think that these volunteers, who all have day jobs, can deliver chest compressions and the defibrillator shocks so quickly that the Bob can. Thanks to our amazing volunteers, Bob is watching a football game again.”
If a football stadium can improve survival, can’t we do it elsewhere? Dr Salwa Malik, vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, says: “Teaching CPR and public access to defibrillators are the two most important things we can do after a cardiac arrest.”
We need first aid taught to everyone – children and adults. A good way to do this for adults would be to introduce the driver’s license test, as they do in many European countries.
More automatic defibrillators are also needed – as fire extinguishers already are, they should become part of regulations for, for example, public buildings.
And you can play a part too: learn CPR, take a first aid class, or raise money for a defibrillator for your local park/school.
But most importantly, remember that starting CPR and putting an automatic defibrillator on someone without signs of life won’t hurt—and may help more people like Bob survive.
As Bob told me, “I’m only alive because I happened to have a cardiac arrest where lifeguards were present and defibrillators were available. I cannot describe in words how happy and grateful I am.”
For more information about CPR, see resus.org.uk/cpr
Information about St John Ambulance, courses and volunteering: sja.org.uk
Professor Rob Galloway works for the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust and is the crowd doctor at the Amex Stadium, home of Brighton and Hove Albion FC.
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Crystal Leahy is an author and health journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a background in health and wellness, Crystal has a passion for helping people live their best lives through healthy habits and lifestyles.
