Many people today enroll themselves to safety and emergency health training centers to equip themselves with the basic knowledge on defibrillation. More particularly, these people aim to learn important things about the proper and efficient use of Automated Exterior Defibrillator (AED). They believe that being adept with this medical device will help themselves or the persons they are with increase survival chances against death due to sudden cardiac arrest. Some of them opt to undergo an AED Program Management course, while there are also some that prefer to go for AED Medical Oversight direction. Either way, it is important to have some background on how defibrillation technology has evolved ever since its inception.
It was in 1899 when Jean-Louis Prevost and Frederic Batelli introduced the first defibrillator, a medical device essentially used to deliver a therapeutic quantity of electrical energy to a malfunctioning heart. However, there were several limitations and imperfections with the first model of defibrillator. That is why another model of the device was developed in 1947 by Professor Claude Beck. His improved version of defibrillator was actually the first one used to revive a human heart under ventricular fibrillation.
Before the late 1980s, The Lown Waveform was the standard electrical waveform used for defibrillation. This waveform is basically described as a heavily damped sinusoidal wave having a finite period of about 5 milliseconds. Developed by Bernard Lown in 1959, it is generated by charging a bank of 1000-volt capacitors having an energy content of 100 to 200 joules. Its charge is then delivered to the affected heart through paddle electrodes. The Lown Waveform was later on replaced by the Biphasic Waveform, which has alternating pulses of about 10 milliseconds duration. This more efficient type of defibrillation waveform was originally intended for implantable cardioverter defibrillators. According to the records, 60 percent of cardiac arrest patients recover the normal sinus rhythm of their heart from ventricular fibrillation with the help of such defibrillator model.
Prior to the development of the AED, manual models such as the manual external defibrillator and the manual internal defibrillator were widely used. Among the main drawbacks of the manual types is the need of expert analysis of the healthcare provider before deciding for the quantity of the electrical charge to be used. This limitation was then solved through the inception of AED. With its computer-based technology, it only takes 10 to 20 seconds for the AED unit to diagnose the heart’s rhythm and automatically determine the most appropriate level of defibrillation to apply. Today, more and more models of AED have been engineered to come up with innovative solution on minimizing the risks on the life of a person suffering from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) or any other deadly heart disorder.
If you want to learn more about AED devices, you can take one of the training courses offered by Citywide – a renowned training center composed of a team of AHA-accredited specialists. Apart from AED Medical Oversight direction and AED Program Management course, many other training courses are offered by Citywide, both online and onsite.
For more information about AED Medical Oversight and AED Program Management, please visit our website.
