An emergency-room doctor attaches paddles to a patient's chest and delivers an electric jolt to the heart. That's a defibrillator in action, a desperate attempt to jump-start a heart whose rhythms have gone haywire. If not treated within about 10 minutes, cardiac arrest almost inevitably leads to death.
Simple versions of those devices—called automatic external defibrillators, or AEDs—are now common in public places, and manufacturers are increasingly selling them to consumers. Some 80 percent of cardiac-arrest deaths occur at home. But there's been no research on whether the devices save lives there-until now.
Researchers looked at some 7,000 patients at increased risk of cardiac arrest, mostly men. Half were given home AEDs. For the others, someone in the household was trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The result: basically a tie. Over three years, the group with AEDs had 27 cardiac-arrest deaths at home while the CPR group had 31. Resuscitation worked eight times in each group.
Our consultants now offer the following advice:
- Learn CPR if you live with someone who has coronary heart disease.
- Home AEDs may be worthwhile for people at increased risk, especially those who live far from an emergency room. (But if you live with someone at high risk, also consider learning CPR since some cardiac arrests won't respond to an AED.)
- Home AEDs are also worthwhile for people who face such a high risk of cardiac arrest that they actually need an implanted version of the device but lack insurance to pay for that option.
