Automated external defibrillators

For this Update, we evaluated three automated external defibrillators (AEDs) from three suppliers: the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Heartstream ForeRunner, the Medtronic Physio-Control Lifepak 500, and the Survivalink FirstSave. We found the units to be good choices for each of three automated defibrillation applications: in-hospital first response, traditional prehospital first response, and public access defibrillation, or PAD (we ranked the Medtronic Physio-Control unit slightly below the other two for this last application). None of these units are appropriate for the fourth application we considered, in-hospital use as a combination automated/manual unit (for use by both basic and advanced users).