6 common AED questions answered

Heard of sudden cardiac arrest but not AED? Or maybe you’ve heard the term ‘AED’ bandied around but never found out what it means. Well, there’s no time like the present to get better acquainted with AED. Indeed, you may be shocked at how important this little acronym is. Automated External Defibrillation (AED) is a do or die scenario. Sudden cardiac arrest strikes silent and swift. Almost immediately, the sufferer’s heart stops.

Blood flow halts. The sufferer is unconscious and not breathing normally. Their chance of survival plummets by 10% with each minute that defibrillation is delayed. CPR is crucial but this alone cannot save their life. An AED allows any first responder on the scene to deliver life-saving defibrillation. To get you cluey about AEDs and why they matter, here are 6 of the most common AED questions answered:

1. What exactly is an AED?
   Essentially an AED is a sophisticated medical device that anyone can use. A sudden cardiac arrest requires CPR combined with defibrillation to be administered to the sufferer. AEDs deliver automated step-by-step instructions and functions to ensure defibrillation is performed safely, easily, and effectively.
   
   
2. Who can use an AED?
   You can! AEDs automate the entire defibrillation function. So AEDs don’t require any special medical nous. Instead, AEDs step you through the entire process. There is no need to interpret the heart’s rhythm analysis either. AEDs automatically do this with great accuracy. This smart device will not ‘shock’ the sufferer if they do not need it.
   
   
3. What does an AED do?
   First, an AED will determine whether the heart is in a suitable shockable rhythm. Where it is, the AED then will deliver electric shock treatment to the heart through the chest wall. This is known as defibrillation. Its purpose is to support the heart to return to a natural rhythm after sudden cardiac arrest. Where defibrillation is administered within the first three minutes of sudden cardiac arrest, the sufferer’s chance of survival can be increased by up to 75%.
   
   
4. Is CPR still required if an AED is available?
   Yes. CPR and AED are the key dynamic duo that work together. Sudden cardiac arrest affects the body in two main ways. It stops the heart and halts blood flow to vital organs. CPR boosts patient survival odds by circulating oxygenated blood flow to maintain all vital organ function. Not CPR-trained? You can still perform this on a sudden cardiac arrest victim. Just stick to compressions-only CPR in the middle of the patient’s chest to maintain blood flow until ambulance/emergency services arrive.
   
   Valuable though it is, CPR cannot re-establish normal heart rhythm. This is where AEDs come in. Only defibrillation can shock a heart back into normal rhythm. Put another way, a sudden cardiac arrest sufferer has:
   – 5% chance of survival where they receive CPR alone
   – >80% chance of survival if they receive defibrillation within the first 1-2 minutes, especially when combined with CPR.

5. What should be done first: CPR or AED?
   Generally CPR is administered first on the scene of sudden cardiac arrest. Yet the priority of sudden cardiac arrest response is always to get the heart beating again. Only defibrillation can get this done. The reason CPR is usually performed first is that a defibrillator is not commonly instantly available on-scene. CPR keeps blood flowing to vital organs until defibrillation is possible.
   
   
6. How can we drive down defibrillation delays?
   Across New Zealand, there are many public-use AED locations (https://aedlocations.co.nz) where first responders can find that crucial defibrillation resource. Naturally emergency and ambulance crews have defibrillators in their kits. Many businesses now have AEDs too. Nonetheless, in 2018/19, only 4% of Kiwis who suffered sudden cardiac arrest out of hospital received defibrillation by community responders. Put another way, 96% of sudden cardiac arrest sufferers missed out on that crucial life-saving defibrillation. Time delays move the sufferer closer to death every minute. In fact, the survival rate drops by 10% each minute that passes without treatment. But now there’s a new bridge to close that survival gap! Its name is CellAED and it’s available in New Zealand before any other country in the world.
   
   CellAED, is a game-changer. Lightweight and compact at the size of a mobile phone, CellAED is effortlessly portable. It can fit unobtrusively in every home, workplace, vehicle glove box – even in your pocket! Because it can go where you go, CellAED drives down defibrillation delays and supercharges sudden cardiac arrest survival odds.