Investigation of capacitor failures in an automated external defibrillator

Over the past 2 years, the Canadian Medical Devices Bureau has received a number of reports of capacitor failures on the high voltage board of an automated external defibrillator. Twenty-five cases of broken capacitor leads were found during routine preventive maintenance by the biomedical engineering staff of the institutions reporting the incidents. The Bureau has carried out a laboratory investigation to determine the effect of missing capacitors on the energy delivered by the defibrillator and to assess whether these capacitor failures represent a significant risk to patients. Our findings indicate that the automated external defibrillator will not perform acceptably with two broken capacitors. They further suggest that, during preventive maintenance, operators should use a defibrillator analyser to measure the delivered energy output rather than using the internal energy measurement circuit within the automated external defibrillator.