AEDs used by the public saves lifes - lots of them

You double your chance to survive a cardiac arrest if you stay in an area where portable defibrillators (the so called AEDs) are common and the public allowed to use them.

As reported by Reuters Dr. Tetsuhisa Kitamura, of the Kyoto University Health Service have published a study in New England Journal of Medicine analyzing information on more than 300,000 Japanese adults who suffered cardiac arrest between 2005 and 2007. The study shows that only 14 percent of the12,631 people that suffered a cardiac arrest in front of witnesses survived and had minimal brain damage one month later. Better odds for those receiving treatment with an AED by one of those witnesses: of those who got an AED shock from a witness it wasn’t 14 but instead 32 percent that survived with little to no brain damage.

And availability is the key: from 2005 to 2007 the rate of those treated by a public AED rose from 1.2 percent to 6.2 percent and cardiac arrest survival was greater in geographic areas with more AEDs.

We have to get away from the perception that healthcare is something mere for the profession to deliver in line with what the government have planned.