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Defibrillators Used Effectively by Volunteers
Automated external defibrillators can be used safely by non-medical personnel. Proper use triples the chance of survival according to U.S. and Italian researchers who studied whether putting the power to shock a heart back into a stable rhythm into the hands of trained volunteers could help more people survive until they reached a hospital.
The study out of the University of Milan and the University of Washington, published in the Dec. 1 issue of the European Heart Journal, looked at rates of survival without neurologic problems at one year. The investigators undertook the Brescia Early Defibrillation Study following the enactment of a law in Italy allowing the use of the devices by non-medical personnel. They studied patients who went into cardiac arrest either before or after implementation of a program in which automated external defibrillators were strategically placed throughout Italy's largest province and used by non-medical volunteers.
Patients in urban areas stood a better chance of making it to the hospital alive than their rural counterparts because of shorter emergency response times and the availability of a larger number of defibrillators in close range. The Brescia Early Defibrillation Study enrolled a total of 2,186 volunteers who received five hours of training in theory and practice of basic life support from qualified instructors.
Forty-nine automated defibrillators were distributed throughout Brescia, the largest province in Italy with a population of nearly 1,113,000. One defibrillator was apportioned for every 22,700 residents. The automated devices supplemented manual defibrillators already in use in 10 provincial hospitals and five medically equipped ambulances.
The researchers collected data between 2000 and 2002 on 692 patients who suffered cardiac arrest in the two years leading up to the study, and on 702 similar patients followed prospectively during the study. The primary study endpoint was survival free of neurological impairment at one year.
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