(Radio Iowa) -A rural southern Iowa man who says he owes his life to his wife’s knowledge of C-P-R is now a strong advocate for getting all Iowans trained in the heart-starting procedure. Seventy-six-year-old Butch Gibbs, of Humeston, travels around the region with his wife, Susie, as volunteer ambassadors for the American Heart Association, giving talks about the simple system that kept him from dying of sudden cardiac arrest in 2004.

“My heart stopped and I quit breathing,” Gibbs says. “My wife immediately started CPR. Our ambulance was 20 miles away. Our local group got there in about three or four minutes, and started using the AED and shocked me numerous times.” It took 25 minutes for the ambulance to arrive and Gibbs says it was the fast actions of his wife and the local paramedics who saved him from grave consequences.

“CPR and an AED are the only things that can reverse a sudden cardiac arrest,” Gibbs says. “For each minute that goes by after you lose your pulse and breathing, that chance of survival decreases 10%, so in 10 minutes, you’re at zero.” More than 350-thousand people nationwide experience cardiac arrests outside of a hospital every year, and 90-percent of them don’t survive. Traditional C-P-R combines chest compressions with breaths, but research has found that doing chest compressions is more crucial, so hands-only C-P-R has become the standard.

“A lot of people would not do CPR because they did not want to put their mouth on another person’s mouth,” Gibbs says. “So most people would just not do anything and wait until the help got there, but you need to start right away with the compressions. We want you to be the help. Don’t wait for the help.” Studies show nearly seven in ten cardiac arrests happen at home, so it’s likely the person who needs C-P-R will be a family member or friend. The American Heart Association website offers a 60-second video that explains the basics of hands-only C-P-R, and Gibbs says he’s living proof that it’s both simple and effective.

“There’s nothing to it. You don’t have to be medically trained. You just have to realize that even if you’re doing it wrong, doing something is better than doing nothing,” he says. “If I wouldn’t have gotten that CPR started right away, then I wouldn’t be here today.”

Gibbs has an I-C-D, or internal cardio defibrillator, implanted in his chest which has automatically shocked his heart back into rhythm 13 times in the past 21 years. Susie Gibbs is retired after nearly 50 years as a nurse, including more than 20 years as an E-R nurse at the Lucas County Health Center in Chariton.

https://international.heart.org/en/hands-only-cpr