title: Emergency dispatcher assistance decreases time to defibrillation in a public venue: a randomized controlled trial.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  We attempted to determine the effect of prearrival instructions that included the specific location of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in a public venue on the time to defibrillation in a simulated cardiac arrest scenario using untrained bystanders.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study was a randomized controlled trial at an urban shopping mall. Participants were asked to retrieve an AED and come back to defibrillate a mannequin. Only the experimental group received the location of the AED. We measured the percentage of shocks that were delivered in less than 3 minutes from the start of the scenario and also recorded several other time intervals.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Thirty-nine participants completed the study, with 20 participants in the experimental group. The median time to defibrillation in the experimental group was 2.6 minutes (interquartile range, 2.4-2.8) which was significantly less than the control group's median time of 5.9 minutes (interquartile range, 4.38-7.65). Ninety percent (95% confidence interval, 68.3%-98.8%) of the participants in the experimental group defibrillated within 3 minutes, which was significantly different from the control group (10.5%; 95% confidence interval, 1.3%-33.1%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In this study, a prearrival protocol providing participants with the location of the nearest AED in a public building resulted in a significant decrease in the time required to deliver a simulated shock. Further investigations in various types of public settings are needed to confirm the results.
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Penn State Hershey Medical Center, United States; Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Thailand. Electronic address: sriyapan@hmc.psu.edu.
authors.forename: Sattha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Riyapan
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Penn State Hershey Medical Center, United States.
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lubin
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D047548:Defibrillators; D004554:Electric Countershock / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004631:Emergency Medical Service Communication Systems; D004632:Emergency Medical Services; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008348:Manikins; D008875:Middle Aged; D058687:Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest / Q000628:therapy*; D061665:Time-to-Treatment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D055815:Young Adult