A mother who lost her "beautiful" 24-year-old son earlier this year has made a desperate call for support installing more publicly accessible defibrillators in Bristol in a bid to save lives. Councillors at Bristol City Council backed a motion which could lead to the life-saving machines being rolled out across the city.
New large developments could soon need to include public access automatic external defibrillators (AEDs), and taxi drivers in Bristol could be trained on using AEDs and carrying out CPR as a licence condition. A charity could also work with the council on installing AEDs.
During a full council meeting on December 13, councillors heard from a doctor about how having public access defibrillators nearby can often mean the difference between life and death for people suffering cardiac arrests, such as 24-year-old Sam Polledri who died in February.
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The rugby player died after suffering a cardiac arrest in Millennium Square, and his mum believes he would have survived had there been access to a defibrillator. Five defibrillators were nearby, but they were all unregistered and behind locked doors. Since his death, his family have raised money to install a public access AED on the square, and are calling for many more to be rolled out in Bristol.
Louise Polledri, Sam’s mother, said: “AEDs can be the difference between life and death. I know this because my beautiful 24-year-old son suddenly and tragically dropped dead from a cardiac arrest in Millennium Square in February this year.
“If the AED that the Sam Polledri Foundation has since installed at Millennium Square — which has already been called upon six times — was there at the time, or if any of the five AEDs surrounding Sam were registered and available to the public, my son would have stood a seven out of 10 chance of survival, not the one in 10 chance he got.
“He would still be alive and able to fulfil his many dreams he had. We would not be in this living hell we find ourselves in. Sam was so happy and so full of life, such a beautiful person inside and out, always looking out for others."
Appealing to councillors, she added: “If we together can achieve making Bristol a safer place to live and save others from this devastation in Sam’s name, he would want us to do this, and his avoidable death would not be in vain. It’s too late for my beautiful boy and for countless others, but not for someone else’s child or loved one.
“I now know the only thing that would have saved my son was an AED. We have the technology. Why are we not using it? Why are we not trying to save these countless avoidable deaths? Sam didn’t have the chance of surviving, but others can.”
Dr Tim Godfrey is an emergency medical consultant at Southmead Hospital, deputy director of acute care at South Western Ambulance Service, and critical care doctor with Great Western Air Ambulance Charity. He urged councillors to back calls for more defibrillators.
He said: “I would thank you for this minute to speak to you, when minutes matter in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. The minutes that you don’t receive good quality CPR from the people near you when you’ve collapsed and the minutes that pass when you haven’t got a publicly accessible defibrillator brought to you lead to worsening outcomes.
“In Great Britain we have an 8% out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rate. In Norway that’s 25% and in Holland it’s 20%. To capture the picture locally, we attended 2,000 incidents in 2021 as Great Western Ambulance Charity, a quarter of those were cardiac arrests, 161 in the city of Bristol.
“Great Western Ambulance Charity is working with our friends and colleagues in the Sam Polledri Foundation to bring more AEDs forward. We’re working on 36 at the moment but we desperately need your support. Tonight there is a 90% chance that I will tell someone that their loved one has died as a result of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.”
