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Harvard Heart Letter | June 2008
Follow-up
Home defibrillators. Every day, nearly 500 Americans collapse with
sudden cardiac arrest. Their only hope for survival is getting a shock from a
defibrillator. These devices can often halt the deadly rhythm that is preventing
the heart from pumping blood to the body. Sadly, most die because there is no
defibrillator nearby or it takes an emergency crew too long to get there with
one. About 80% of cardiac arrests happen at home, a statistic that has some
people wondering if they should spend the $1,300 or so to buy one for their home
(see the January 2003 Heart Letter).
Results from the Home Automated External Defibrillator Trial, presented in
April 2008 at the American College of Cardiology meeting, suggest it may not be
such a great investment. Among the 7,000 heart attack survivors taking part in
the trial, deaths from a subsequent cardiac arrest were as common in the
households with a defibrillator as they were in the households with family
members trained to do CPR. Why didn’t the home defibrillators save lives? One
big reason is that only about half of the cardiac arrests were witnessed by a
family member. Also, the shock was often delivered too late to help. A better
investment might be to make sure everyone in the family knows how to do CPR.
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