A 10 year old boy nearly died after collapsing and suffering a sudden cardiac arrest whilst playing ‘British Bulldog’ in the school playground.

Koby Hodder’s heart stopped for a massive 12 minutes after collapsing whilst running and playing with friends during the morning break at school.

He suffered a cardiac arrest whilst playing a well known playground game ‘British Bulldog’ whereby children run from one side of the playground to the other hoping to avoid the ‘bulldogs’ in the middle.

After receiving two shocks from a defibrillator, Koby was rushed to Doncaster Royal Infirmary, where he seemed to be on the road to recovery before suffering another cardiac incident and was transferred to Leeds General Infirmary Paediatric Care Unit for further care.

Koby has now been fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) to shock his heart back into rhythm should anything like this ever happen again.

When a cardiac arrest occurs, it means that the heart begins to ‘fibrillate’ or beat in an irregular fashion. This prevents blood from getting to the vital organs and the condition can only be solved with immediate treatment.

The only form of treatment for someone who suffers a sudden cardiac arrest is the application of effective CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and the use of a defibrillator. If administered within 5 minutes of the incident, survival chances increase from 6% to 74%.

For every passing minute without treatment, survival chances decrease by 10%.

A condition which can affect children in their earlier years is commotio cordis, a heart related problem whereby a sudden blow to the chest can cause the heart to stop beating regularly and fibrillate.

This rarely affects adults as during growth into adulthood, the chest wall stiffens and can sustain blows to the chest to protect the heart muscle in this way.

defibshop Sales Manager Paula Leech said: “We have read so many stories of children unfortunately suffering sudden cardiac arrests at school, 270 children suffer SCA’s in school per year.

‘It is vitally important that we get a defibrillator in every school across the country so that we are as prepared as we can be when it comes to protecting children against cardiac arrest.”

If you would like more information regarding our AED and CPR training courses or our range of defibrillators we have available, call our friendly defibshop team on 0845 071 0830 and we’ll be more than happy to help.