Abstract
From April 2000 to November 2002, the Department of Health (England) placed 681 automated
external defibrillators (AEDs) in 110 public places for use by volunteer lay first
responders. An audit has been undertaken of the first 250 deployments, of which 182
were for confirmed cardiac arrest. Of these, 177 were witnessed whilst 5 occurred
in situations that were remote or initially inaccessible to the responders. The response
interval between collapse and the initiation of CPR or AED placement was estimated
to be 3–5 min in most cases.
Ventricular fibrillation or rapid ventricular tachycardia (one case) was the first
recorded rhythm in 146 cases (82%). In all, 44 of the 177 witnessed cases are known
to have survived to hospital discharge (25%). Complete downloads are available for
173 witnessed cases and of these 140 were shocked: first-shock success, defined as
termination of the fibrillatory waveform for 5 s or more, was achieved in 132 of them. When data quality permitted, the downloads
were analysed with special reference to the numbers of compressions given and also
to interruptions in compression sequences for ventilations, for rhythm analysis by
the AED, for clinical checks, and for unexplained operator delays.
The average rate of compressions during sequences was 120 min−1, but because of interruptions, the actual number administered over a full minute
from the first CPR prompt was a median of only 38.
The speed of response by the lay first responders in relation to AED use was similar
to that reported for healthcare professionals.
Keywords
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Article info
Footnotes
☆A Spanish and Portuguese translated version of the Abstract and Keywords of this article appears at 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2005.01.003.
Identification
Copyright
© 2005 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
