In heart attacks, minutes matter, but in cardiac arrest, it’s the seconds that count. Cardiac arrest, also called a “code blue,” is the most urgent emergency in all of medicine, which is why it is the only diagnosis announced over a hospital’s overhead speakers. When other organs stop working, death usually follows in minutes, hours, or days—the body can sometimes live for years after brain death—but when cardiac arrest occurs, death technically happens in that same instant. The death of our hearts is death.
