Calls for "mandatory" CPR training after 25 year old TikToker collapses on holiday

Davide Patron says he owes his life to quick thinking strangers, after collapsing on his way home to Edinburgh from a holiday in France.

The 25 year old TikToker - whose viral videos teach native Italians English tips - suffered a sudden cardiac arrest whilst boarding a train in Paris. It came completely out of the blue for him, with no history of heart problems and an otherwise healthy lifestyle:

"It took me a good two or three days to actually make sense of things and realise what had happened.”

“I can’t remember exactly, I only know what happened because my girlfriend told me about it. Essentially we were getting on the train and I simply said ‘I need to sit down’, so then I fell to the ground and thankfully the people around me started helping me, started doing CPR and used a defibrillator to bring me back to life.”

“When I first woke up in the hospital, I mean the first time I woke up was for a few seconds and I had all these tubes down my throat, so nothing made sense really. Even the second time, my family was around me, it took me a good two or three days to actually make sense of things and realise what had happened.”

Patron says his experience means he wants to raise awareness of the importance of learning CPR skills, given the difference it can make:

“I think it should be mandatory for everyone to perform CPR correctly and effectively, because you never know when you’re going to save someone’s life.”

“If I hadn’t been in a public place with a defibrillator and people around me who knew how to perform CPR then my story would have ended very differently.”

The Scottish government's out-of-hospital cardiac arrest strategy estimates 1 in 10 Scots currently have CPR skills, with around 5000 Public Access Defibrillators installed in communities across Scotland.