The nine biggest winners during the last two years at Harrah's casino in Atlantic City didn't win a lot of money. They went home with something far more precious - their lives.
The nine all suffered cardiac arrests in the casino. With no warning, their hearts stopped beating, and they fell to the floor unconscious.
But all were saved by security guards who were on top of them within minutes, shocking their hearts and bringing them back to life.
FOR THE RECORD - CLEARING THE RECORD, PUBLISHED JULY 7, 2000, FOLLOWS: A drawing in Sunday's Inquirer, showing how an automatic external defibrillator works, was accidentally reversed. The correct placement of the pads used in a cardiac arrest should be as follows: (see Pad placement drawing).
Had they been elsewhere, it is unlikely they would have survived. Few places have the easy-to-use devices for shocking the heart - automatic external defibrillators (AED).
These devices, the American Heart Association says, could save 50,000 lives a year, five times the number now being saved, if more of them were in airports and airplanes, office buildings, sports arenas, gyms, golf courses, train stations, office buildings and other places where large numbers of people gather.
In the last five years - since defibrillators became small enough, cheap enough, and foolproof enough for anyone to use - the devices have increasingly been viewed as a critical public-health advance.
The FAA has ordered airlines to put the devices on airplanes within three years. Last year, 64 passengers died in the air of cardiac arrests; only four people were saved because so few airplanes carry AEDs.
Congress has passed a bill, expected to be signed by President Clinton, that would urge departments to put AEDs into federal buildings and extend Good Samaritan laws to protect people who use them from being sued if something goes wrong.
Courts are beginning to hold groups liable if someone dies because no AED was available when needed. One airline was ordered to pay $2.7 million and an amusement park, $350,000.
Yet it has been largely through the determination of individuals - not mandates - that AEDs are taking hold.
Many lives are being saved in Chicago's airports because Sherry Caffrey, a 27-year-old paramedic trainer, developed a plan to distribute AEDs throughout the terminals.
Casinos have the devices now because one man argued in their favor for 11/2 years. And all police cars in central Bucks and eastern Montgomery Counties have them because Mark Rosenthal, an Abington cardiologist, pressed for their use and his hospital raised the money to buy the AEDs.
