[Public access defibrillation].
Placement of automated external defibrillators (AED) in public facilities and training of the lay persons in basic life support-defibrillation (BLS-D) was recommended by the American Heart Association for the treatment of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Immediate use of AED result in increase of survival to hospital discharge. Many observation and much less randomized trials describe clinical efficacy of this approach. However, "negative" trials have also been published and some recent data suggest that public access defibrillation (PAD) will have a minimal impact on population survival. In this article various PAD strategies were briefly reviewed. In our opinion installation of AED in public places should be based on the long-term study of local OHCA demography and preceded by widespread BLS training of lay population.
Katz
Eugène
E
Service de cardiologie, CHUV, Lausanne.
Metzger
Jacques-Thierry
JT
Sierro
Christophe
C
Deac
Monica
M
Fishman
Daniel
D
Girod
Grégoire
G
Potin
Mathieu
M
Niquille
Marc
M
Stauffer
Jean-Christoffe
JC
Kehtari
Réza
R
Sénéchaud
Christophe
C
Garcia
Wenceslao
W
Rodriguez
Maria
M
Fromer
Martin
M
D003256:Community Participation; D047548:Defibrillators; D006291:Health Policy; D006323:Heart Arrest / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D011633:Public Facilities