Defibrillation: ensuring its success

In this issue, we evaluate two alternatives to the gelled paddles traditionally used in defibrillation: disposable defibrillator pads and disposable defibrillator electrodes. These devices offer certain advantages over gel and are designed primarily to ensure adequate electrical contact for successful defibrillation. We evaluated three disposable defibrillator pads from three manufacturers and two disposable defibrillator electrodes from two manufacturers and rated them according to their suitability for three applications: general hospital use, cardiac catheterization and electrophysiology laboratory use, and prehospital use. We rated the AMI, ConMed, and 3M pads Acceptable for all three applications. Because electrodes offer advantages as well as present problems when used for different applications, we rated them accordingly. The Darox and Physio-Control electrodes are rated Conditionally Acceptable-Not Recommended, Acceptable, and Conditionally Acceptable for the three applications, respectively. Purchasing decisions should be based on a thorough understanding of the issues behind our conclusions, which can be gained only by reading this evaluation in its entirety.