Doctors have urged all golf courses to install equipment to resuscitate those who collapse while playing after a study in Northern Ireland found 70 golfers died suddenly on golf courses over a five-year period. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
The study, carried out by doctors at the Royal Victoria and Ulster Hospitals in Belfast, found just six of 88 registered golf courses in the North have access to defibrillators even though there were an average of 14 deaths from heart attacks per year on the golf courses.
The main reasons given by golf courses for not having defibrillators, which are used to deliver an electric shock to patients who collapse with heart failure to resuscitate them, were user liability, training issues and cost. Dr John O'Hare, specialist registrar in emergency medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital, said the chances of a person surviving after a heart attack diminished by 10 per cent for every minute they waited for defibrillation.
He said golf courses were often remote and many of those who played were retired men so if they arrested on the course and there was no defibrillator available, they had almost no chance of surviving.
"The quicker you get electricity to the heart the better the survival rate.
"In the US where they have public access defibrillators, they have recorded survival rates of up to 28 per cent," Dr O'Hare said.
He added that golf is the sport that is associated with most deaths in Ireland and the golf course is the sixth most common site for out of hospital cardiac arrests.
Dr O'Hare, who carried out the study with Dr Gillian Porter, a senior house officer in emergency medicine at the Ulster Hospital, said every golf course North and South should have an automated external defibrillator on site.
Dr O'Hare said sufficient numbers of people in the club should be trained, not only in its use, but also in the principles of basic life support.
A copy of the study, which will be presented at a conference in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, on Friday, is to be sent to the golf clubs which participated in the study.
A similar study of golf courses in Cork and Kerry over a year ago found only one of 46 clubs had life-saving equipment even though 21 people, mainly men, died on golf courses in the two counties over a four-year period.