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Standardized Model of Ventricular Fibrillation and Advanced Cardiac Life Support in Swine
Published on: January 30, 2020
Public defibrillation: increased survival from a structured response system
Judy Powell1, Lois Van Ottingham, Eleanor Schron
1Clinical Trial Center, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash., USA. jlpowell@u.washington.edu
Abstract:
The Public Access Defibrillation (PAD) trial was a prospective, randomized, controlled study designed to compare the number of persons surviving to hospital discharge after experiencing an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OOH-CA) among "community units" randomized to receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) only or CPR plus an automated external defibrillator (AED). In 24 centers across the United States and Canada, 993 community units, composed of 1260 individual facilities, trained more than 19,000 layperson responders in CPR-only or CPR+AED. Survival to hospital discharge in the CPR+AED arm was double that of the CPR-only arm (30 vs 15, P = .03; RR = 2.0, 95% CI [1.07-3.77]). Intense focus on facility infrastructure, including responder recruitment and training, communication, evaluation, and oversight, was necessary for implementing the emergency response systems for the trial. Use of an AED within this structured response system can increase the number of survivors to hospital discharge after OOH-CA. Trained nonmedical responders can use AEDs safely and effectively.
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