Calls for life-saving defibrillators at sports clubs
There are fresh calls for defibrillators to be put in every Victorian sports club after a 13-year-old boy went into cardiac arrest on the footy field.
Troy Wright never imagined he would have a heart attack before his 14th birthday.
But on Friday, an undiagnosed heart condition nearly claimed his life when he had a cardiac arrest playing footy in Narre Warren.
The game was in its third quarter when Troy suddenly collapsed.
"I just blinked and felt dizzy then fell to the ground," he told 7News.
Paramedics arrived just in time, and he was rushed to hospital.
His father Paul said: "You know I saw something that parents don't ever want to see, them working on him in the back of the ambulance, giving him chest compressions."
Troy is now recovering in hospital, but his family say he was minutes from death.
Sue Buckman's 19-year-old son, Stephen, wasn't so lucky. He died of a heart attack during a football game in May last year, and Sue says a heart defibrillator could have saved his life.
"You think that you'll lose someone from a car accident, but never ever from a heart condition on the football ground," she said.
Sue has now joined a campaign to have defibrillators put in every Victorian sport club.
"If we had a defibrillator, we may have had a different outcome," she said.
MICA paramedic Andrew White started his campaign, Defib your club, for life, to stress the importance of defibrillators and why all sports clubs should have one.
The life-saving machine kick starts the heart during cardiac arrest.
Andrew said: "For every one minute post collapse relates to a ten percent chance less survival so it's really important within the first five minutes."
"If it has to get used once it's saved a life," Sue said. "Then another family won't have to go through what my family has been through."
South East Junior's General Manager Shaun Connell said the league is looking to equip each of its clubs with the life-saving device.
He said: "They are a costly unit, but what price do you put on a kids life?"
While Troy is out of immediate danger, he has still got a way go.
He will undergo an operation later this week where surgeons will attach an artery from his chest to his heart.
Assistant Professor Sarah Hope, of the Monash Medical Centre, said: "There is the potential for him to get back to normal life, after it's been treated."
