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When exercise turns deadly: fitness clubs should not rely on CPR to revive patrons who suffer sudden cardiac arrest. Automated external defibrillators save lives, and they are easy to use - but many gyms don't have them.

Article Excerpt
You are having lunch with colleagues when a probate lawyer from your firm mentions that John Doe a 50-year-old client, died yesterday while exercising at a health club. Club employees began CPR within a minute or two of John's collapse and phoned 911 for paramedics, who arrived six to eight minutes later. The paramedics took him to the emergency room, where he was pronounced dead--a victim of sudden cardiac arrest (SEA).

"What a shame," says another lawyer at the table. "I guess John's time had just come."

"Maybe not," you say. "Did the health club have an AED?"

"An AED?" asks the probate lawyer "What's that?"

You explain: All automated external defibrillator (AED) is a battery-operated device, about the size of Black's Law Dictionary, used to administer an electric shock to a heart in cardiac arrest. SCA is caused by an electrical malfunction of the heart that causes an abnormal heart rhythm--or arrhythmia--the most common of which is ventricular fibrillation (VF). A person suffering from VF will die unless the heart's normal rhythm and pumping action are restored. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) may buy extra minutes by circulating some blood to the brain and other organs, but it cannot reverse sudden cardiac arrest. An AED can.

Studies have shown that defibrillation within the first few minutes of SCA gives the victim an 80 percent to 90 percent chance of survival. (1) Survival rates drop by 7 percent to 10 percent for each minute that goes by without defibrillation. (2)

AEDs are relatively inexpensive (between $2,500 and $3,000), and they are virtually foolproof. The machines are so simple to use that even untrained elementary-school children operated them in a study reported in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association (AHA). (3) An AED has a "start" hut, ton: Pushing it activates a voice recording that tells the user exactly what to do.

Health club operators know that SCA can happen in their facilities. Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. adults has some form of cardiovascular disease, (4) and SCA kills about 350,000 Americans a year. (5) People are 15 to 20 times more likely to die of SCA during vigorous exercise, or within 30 minutes following it, than when not engaged in vigorous exercise. (6)

Health and fitness clubs--which provide equipment and a controlled environment for exercise--know their patrons are at increased risk for SCA. Most keep records of such incidents and have come to expect them. (7) One health club executive has testified in deposition that his gyms expect 1 cardiac event for every 100,000 person-hours of exercise. (8) Even if this estimate is too high, busy facilities can have well over 100,000 person-hours of exercise a year. (9)

Back to your hypothetical lunch: You suggest that the probate lawyer advise John's widow that she might have a cause of action against the health club for wrongful death. The gym should have had an AED. If health club employees had used one on John within the first four minutes of his SCA, he probably would have survived.

Points of proof

To prove a cause of action against a health club for injury or death arising from its failure to have or use an AED, you...