A Kent man whose heart stopped seven times has met the crews who saved him. SECAmb, Tunbridge Wells' ambulance trust, had England's best survival rate in May.
South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb), the trust that answers 999 calls in Tunbridge Wells, had the best cardiac arrest survival rate of any ambulance service in England in May. One of its patients that month, a Kent man whose heart stopped seven times, has now met the crews who brought him back.
Rob, 59, lives in Lordswood, about 20 miles north-east of Tunbridge Wells. “Without all of their help the outcome could have been a different story I’m sure,” he said. “I will be forever in their debt.”
Nearly two hours at the family home
Rob was washing his car at home on 18 May when his arm went numb and he had chest pain, the trust said. His wife, Sue, called 999 immediately.
Resource Dispatchers Amie and Emily, at the Gillingham Emergency Operations Centre, sent Community First Responder Lisa to the house. Paramedic Georgia and Associate Ambulance Practitioner Jenni arrived shortly afterwards, and Rob went into cardiac arrest in front of them as they assessed him with Lisa.
Paramedic Cameron and Associate Ambulance Practitioner Grace joined the resuscitation, along with Critical Care Paramedic Chris, who gave an anaesthetic bundle to support Rob’s recovery and help protect his brain.
The team of six restarted his heart. It stopped a further six times, and crews kept treating him at the scene. Nearly two hours after Sue’s call his heart regained a regular rhythm, and he was taken to William Harvey Hospital for emergency surgery to remove a blockage from an artery.
Ten weeks later
The recovery was rocky, in the trust’s words. Within a month of leaving hospital Rob had chest pains and crews were called again. Associate Ambulance Practitioner Holly and Paramedic Lucy attended, and he went to Medway Maritime Hospital for further care.
Ten weeks after the cardiac arrest he went to the trust’s Medway Make Ready Centre to thank Lisa, Georgia, Jenni, Cameron, Grace, Holly, Lucy, Amie and Emily in person. He has little memory of what they did that day, so he heard it from them. They heard what happened after he left their care.
“Seeing Robert walk into the room was a great feeling,” Cameron said. “Considering the last time I saw him he was post cardiac arrest and still suffering from a heart attack, Robert’s outcome demonstrates how vital early recognition, early CPR, early defibrillation and rapid transfer to advanced care are to a patient’s survival in cardiac arrest. This incident is a prime example that shows how good interagency working and strong teamwork provides the absolute best outcome for our patients.”
What the record does and does not tell us here
SECAmb says 17.2 per cent of its cardiac arrest patients in May were alive 30 days later, its highest monthly figure. Its previous best was 15.9 per cent, in June and August 2023.
NHS England’s ambulance outcome figures back that up: 40 survivors from 233 patients, against 10.2 per cent for England as a whole. London was next at 12.3 per cent, followed by Yorkshire on 10.5, the North East on 9.8, the West Midlands on 9.5, the East Midlands on 8.8, the South Central and South Western services on 8.6 each, East of England on 8.5 and the North West on 8.3. The Isle of Wight had no survivors from 13 patients.
One month can move a long way on numbers this small. The same data puts SECAmb at 14.2 per cent in April, 11.3 in March and 10.7 in January.
The figures cover the whole trust, from Kent and Medway to Surrey, Sussex and parts of north-east Hampshire. There is no separate survival rate for Tunbridge Wells in the published data, so the record says nothing about how patients in the borough fared. The trust’s five-year strategy commits it to improving cardiac arrest survival by 5 per cent, a goal it has set for 2029.
Response times are also published only for the trust as a whole. In September the NHS England figures show SECAmb reaching the most urgent category 1 calls in a mean of 7 minutes 50 seconds, against 7 minutes 59 seconds for England and a seven-minute standard. Category 2 calls took a mean of 32 minutes 33 seconds, against 31 minutes 18 seconds for England. The trust’s own page gives the standard for those as 18 minutes, which NHS England has currently adjusted to 30.
What it means for you
SECAmb says the chance of survival falls by about 10 per cent for every minute someone stays in cardiac arrest without CPR and defibrillation. Its CPR page adds that most cardiac arrests outside hospital happen in the home, so the first person to help may well be someone already in the house. The same page sets out what you can do in Tunbridge Wells, Southborough, Paddock Wood or anywhere else in the South East:
- Learn in person, free. SECAmb trains anyone in the region. Use the form on its CPR page or email cpr@secamb.nhs.uk.
- Learn online in about 15 minutes. The British Heart Foundation’s free RevivR tool is linked from the same page.
- Help others. The page explains how to become a community first responder, which was Lisa’s role when she reached Rob, and how to sign up to GoodSAM.
- Get support afterwards. It also lists help for survivors, their families and bystanders.
The trust thanked a four-year-old at its Paddock Wood centre last month for helping on her mum’s 999 call. Its Kent awards last week honoured a pub landlord who gave eight minutes of CPR in the rain.
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