By Karen L. Kier, Pharmacist

In December of 1977, the Bee Gees released Stayin’ Alive, which was from the movie soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever. In 1979, the Bee Gees won a Grammy Award for the Best Vocal Arrangement for Two or More Voices. This would be the first of five Grammy Awards for the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. 

The Bee Gees were formed in 1959 combining the talents of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The brothers were born in England, but their family moved to Australia where the group got their start. The Bee Gees were known for three-part tight harmonies. The brothers started in the pop genre, but morphed into disco in the early 1970s.

Of the 120 million records the Bee Gees sold globally, Stayin’ Alive may be the only one known to have saved peoples’ lives. Why is that?

Almost 500,000 Americans die from cardiac arrest each year with about 350,000 of these occurring outside of a hospital.  The American Heart Association reports the chance of surviving a cardiac arrest is doubled or tripled if immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is administered.

The importance of immediate CPR was highlighted during the NFL football game in January 2023 when the Buffalo Bills’ Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest during the game with the Cincinnati Bengals. The athletic trainers started CPR and administered electronic shocks to the heart with an automated external defibrillator (AED). He survived.

Damar Hamlin and the American Heart Association teamed up in November of 2023 to start a campaign to improve awareness for immediate CPR in cardiac arrest.  Damar has a social media platform to help save lives known as #3forHeart™ CPR Challenge. This challenge encourages people to learn and perform hands-only CPR (no breaths given, only compressions). 

A presentation at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in November of 2024 provided additional evidence for the need for bystander CPR.  The researchers analyzed 198,869 witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrests between 2013 through 2022. The mean age was 64 years with 66% being men. The researchers evaluated the time to initiation of CPR and successful survival and discharge from the hospital. The authors indicated the sooner that CPR is started the better the outcome, but surprisingly survival was still improved if CPR was started within 10 minutes of the arrest.  

High-quality CPR makes a difference in saving lives when initiated early including hands-only CPR. High-quality CPR is defined as CPR given at the correct rate of compressions and the correct depth of the compression into the chest.  CPR should provide chest compressions at a rate of 100 to 120 beats per minute. Yes, this is fast! The depth of the compressions should be between 2 to 2.4 inches or 5-6 centimeters for adults.  

So how does the song Stayin’ Alive save lives?

If you perform CPR with the beat of Stayin’ Alive, then your compressions would be between 103 to 104 beats per minute.  There are videos of survivor stories where the rescuer sang Stayin’ Alive while performing CPR. Other songs to sing for the correct compression rates include Dancing Queen by ABBA (101 beats per minute), Baby Shark by Pink Fong (115) and the Eye of the Tiger by Survivor (112). 

Learn hands-only CPR and keep staying alive!

ONU HealthWise offers the shingles vaccine along with flu, COVID-19 and other vaccinations. Vaccine clinics will continue through the middle of December on weekdays from 2:00-6:00 p.m.

The pharmacy is open 9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. and 2:00-6:00 p.m. on weekdays and 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. on Saturdays.