Key result
In-hospital AED use shows no survival benefit over CPR alone, with few shockable rhythms.
Why the study?
The effectiveness of automated external defibrillator use for in-hospital CPR when a professional emergency response team is rapidly available is uncertain.
Cohort (n=1,008)
No
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Questions sufficiency of AED deployment alone for in-hospital arrests; hypothesis-generating and requires prospective confirmation before practice change.
The in-hospital spread of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) is aimed to allow for a shock-delivery within three minutes. However, it has to be questioned if the implementation of AED alone really contributes to a 'heart-safe hospital'. We performed a cohort study of 1008 in-hospital emergency calls in a university tertiary care hospital, analysing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) cases with and without AED use. In total, 484 patients (48%) had cardiac arrest and received CPR. Response time of the emergency team was 4.3 ± 4.0 minutes. Only 8% percent of the CPR cases had a shockable rhythm. In three of 43 placements a shock was delivered by the AED. There were no differences in survival between patients with CPR only and CPR with AED use. Our data do not support the use of an AED for in-hospital CPR if a professional response team is rapidly available.
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Huschak et al. (2016) conducted a cohort in In-hospital cardiac arrest (n=1,008). Automated external defibrillator (AED) use vs. CPR without AED use was evaluated on Survival. Automated external defibrillator use for in-hospital CPR showed no difference in survival compared to CPR alone, with only 8% of cases having a shockable rhythm.
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