First class: Cardiac arrest survivor thanks 'air-mazing' airport lifesavers
02.12.24
A MOTHER-of-one who had a cardiac arrest at Cardiff Airport has thanked those who saved her life.
Alice Mogford, 48, of Neath, had just landed from a trip to Belfast when she collapsed in the arrivals hall and stopped breathing.
Quick-thinking airport staff began CPR and shocked Alice with a defibrillator prior to the arrival of the ambulance service.
Ambulance crews provided advanced life support and took Alice to hospital, where she underwent surgery and spent six weeks in recovery.
Alice said: “I’d like to relay my sincere thanks to everyone involved in saving my life.
“I know now that the survival rate for cardiac arrests is really low, so I guess I was in the right place at the right time.
“They deserve all the praise in the world.”
Alice and her partner Neil Evans, 60, daughter Shannon, 20, and four-month-old granddaughter Siobhan-Rose, had been visiting Alice’s native Belfast, along with Alice’s uncle Paddy Leonard.
Minutes after they landed back in Cardiff, Alice took ill.
Neil said: “Alice had a bit of discomfort on the plane, but we thought it was something or nothing.
“Then as we got off the plane and were walking through the terminal building, she just keeled over backwards.
“Thankfully, she had a rucksack on which cushioned her fall, otherwise she could have had a serious head injury too.”
Alice, an office manager, said: “I’ve got no recollection of what happened, but apparently, I was complaining of chest pain on the flight.
“The next thing I know I was waking up in hospital feeling hazy.
“I still don’t think I’ve really processed what happened.”
On-site first aiders began the ‘chain of survival’ by giving chest compressions to Alice and delivering three shocks with a defibrillator, while aircraft dispatcher Chloe Hobbs co-ordinated the scene.
By chance, Chloe had completed her Community Welfare Responder (CWR) training with the Welsh Ambulance Service a month prior.
CWRs are trained to attend appropriate 999 calls in their community and take a set of observations to help clinicians in the ambulance control room decide the appropriate next steps.
That might be a sending an ambulance, a referral to the patient’s GP, self-care advice or something else.
Chloe said: “It was all very out of the blue.
“The last of the passengers had just disembarked the plane so I radioed up to my colleagues in the terminal building.
“The next minute, I heard a scream, so I ran into the arrivals hall and saw Alice on the floor.
“Neil and I put her in the recovery position and tried to make sure her airways were clear, and our on-site first aiders arrived after a couple of minutes.
“Alice’s condition deteriorated rapidly, and as the airport fire section arrived, she stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest.
“The fast response from the airport first responders allowed them to start chest compressions immediately, and within 40 seconds a defibrillator was attached, which was a vital part of Alice’s survival.
“Seeing everyone working together to give Alice the best possible care was truly amazing.”
Welsh Ambulance Service call handler Julia Donaldson took the 999 call, while urgent care assistants Lance Davies and Danielle Prince were the first to arrive.
They were backed up by Cymru High Acuity Response Unit paramedic Vickie Duance, senior paramedics Laura Deabreu and William Moore and emergency medical technician Owen Thomas.
Advanced critical care support was delivered by the Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service Cymru, highly skilled consultants and critical care practitioners who work on board Wales Air Ambulance charity helicopters and cars.
Alice was taken to the University Hospital of Wales, and later Swansea’s Morriston Hospital, where she was fitted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), a battery-powered device which detects irregular heartbeats and delivers electric shocks to restore a regular heart rhythm.
After a six week-stay in hospital, she is now recovering at home and is encouraging the public to learn CPR.
Alice said: “I get how the general public would ‘freeze’ in that situation, but having lived through this first-hand, my message is that you can’t possibly do more damage, so give CPR a go.”
Neil added: “A defibrillator will literally tell you what to do, so even if you’ve never used one before, you just follow the voice prompts.”
When someone has a cardiac arrest, they collapse and become unresponsive.
They either stop breathing entirely, or they may take gasping or infrequent breaths for a few minutes, which can be misinterpreted as snoring.
If you see someone having a cardiac arrest, phone 999 and start CPR.
The Resuscitation Council UK has produced a step-by-step guide to doing CPR:
How to do CPR | Resuscitation Council UK
An ambulance call handler will also tell you where your nearest defibrillator is.
All new and existing defibrillators must be registered on the national defibrillator network The Circuit so that 999 call handlers can see their location:
The Circuit - the national defibrillator network