In any emergency medical situation, it is important for any individual near the victim that the correct measures are done to make the individual survive. Among the medical situations which really need the performance of immediate measures is sudden cardiac arrest. This term is used when an unexpected cardiac arrest happened to an individual. A cardiac arrest refers to the interruption in the normal circulation of blood. This happens due to the heart’s failure in contracting normally. When one suffers from cardiac arrest, immediate response must be provided since any minute wasted could cost the life of a person. One of the measures done to make the victim survive from the situation is the use of automated external defibrillator or AED.
AED makes use of defibrillation in making the heart establish its effective rhythm. Defibrillation is the delivery of a therapeutic dose of electrical energy into the heart which eventually results into the stoppage of arrhythmia. This portable electronic device was designed to be used by laypersons during cases when cardiac arrests happen outside of the hospital. The most ideal people to use AED are those who received a proper training for it to ensure that the proper utilization is done.
To ensure that the AED would be used by more people in the community, numerous items were distributed and sold throughout the United States. Based on data, there is an estimate of one million AEDs sold across the US and were put in airports, casinos, shopping malls, and recreation centers and gyms. Other public places were also the destination of some of the AEDs purchased. Despite the presence of AEDs in public places, there is one glaring problem though regarding it. The cardiac arrest survival rates are still quite poor in certain areas in the US. The survival rate is at a measly below 10 percent.
An organization in Pennsylvania made a study focused on mapping out the locations of 3,483 cardiac arrests which happened outside the hospital. Out of that figure, only seven percent happened within a 200-foot radius of an AED. To put the 200 feet radius into perspective, it is a two-minute walk, roundtrip from where the victim is. At least 10 percent was within 400 feet (four-minute walk) while at least 21 percent happened within 600 feet (six-minute walk). The patient’s survival rate significantly drops after AED was applied six minutes after the incident happened, considering that there is already a decrease of 10 percent in survival in each minute that passes.
In this kind of problem, facilities with AED must get a company which can help them in AED program management as well as AED medical oversight to ensure that the device would be used properly. One reliable company would be Citywide CPR Inc. Headquartered in the Chicagoland/Metropolitan Area, Citywide CPR can be contacted in various locations across the US. Aside from their AED services, the company also offers training courses in CPR, BLS, and ACLS among others.
For more information about AED medical oversight and AED program management, please visit our website.
