Mary Ann Cooper

How many have cardiac arrest?

What causes the death?

So we can characterize it.

Depends on where you are.

If you're in Africa, it's far different than if you're in the United States.

So I presume you're asking about the United States.

The risk is very small, but it used to be a lot larger because people didn't know how to protect themselves.

To prevent lightning injury, you need two things.

One is you need safe places to go to.

And we are blessed in this country that we're all within a few feet, usually a few seconds of a safe place, a substantial building or a metal vehicle.

The other thing you need to know is the behavior that you need to take to modify your risk.

And the media are the ones that have worked on this and the Lightning Safety Council, too.

But certainly the media are the ones that have gotten the safety information out over the past 25 years.

And we have decreased the lightning deaths in the United States from around 60 or 70 a year in the late 90s down to under 20 a year now.

So we've decreased, you know, 60, 70%.

Now, that's what we don't know.

The pathophysiology of what actually happens to the cells and all that.

I can tell you that symptomatically what happens is very often the person is going to lose consciousness.

They're going to have amnesia for a while.

They're going to have many of the symptoms of brain injury, similar to the football players, brain injuries, concussive, post-concussive types of things.