Abstract
Abstract
In order to resuscitate a patient suffering from cardiac arrest, it is crucial to obtain early defibrillation. Wanting to increase the survival-rate from out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest, one obviously has to reduce the time from the patient is collapsing till the first shock is delivered. This can mainly be done in one of these three ways: 1, First responder groups, 2, PAD (public access defibrillators), 3, At home-defibrillation.
PAD-trials have shown that the survival rate can be increased tremendously when placing PADs on locations with a high density of people. It is therefore tempting to equipe malls, airports, train-stations etc. with these PADs. But would that lead to an increased survival-rate in Norway? In this work I discuss this question by studying relevant papers on the topic. From these I conclude that due to our low density of population, it seems most appropriate to support a first-responder-strategy in order to increase the survival-rate of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest in Norway.
Explanation of the above used terms:
1, First responder groups = Equipping and training lay-persons (police-officers, fire-fighters etc) to use a defibrillator.
2, PAD (public access defibrillators) = Placing defibrillators at “high-risk locations”.
3, At home-defibrillation = The patient has a private external defibrillator at home.