Defibrillators

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece on my page about the fact that anyone can use a defibrillator – even if they don’t know the person suffered a cardiac arrest – since the machine does the deciding for you.

Here’s more information on defibrillators.

■ About 30,000 people have a cardiac arrest outside hospital each year in the UK. Yet a survey shows that there’s wide variation in the number of publicly accessible units, depending on where you live.

■ Although London has the most units – 5,304 in total – that’s only 61 per 100,000 people. Swansea, on the other hand, has 349 publicly accessible defibrillators, which is 140 per 100,000 people.

■ If someone having a cardiac arrest is given an electric shock using a defibrillator within a minute, they have a 90% chance of surviving. That survival rate falls by 10% for every minute’s delay.

■ But even some large cities have poor facilities. There are only 24 public-access defibrillators across Birmingham as a whole. That’s two per 100,000 people.

■ In Newcastle upon Tyne, things aren’t much better: there are only 18 public defibrillators – just five per 100,000 people.

■ There might be other defibrillators elsewhere but you may not be able to access the ones locked away outside working hours. And there will be some in hospitals but not accessible to the general public.

■ If you’re in London, you could find yourself helped out by the Metropolitan Police because they often carry defibrillators in their patrol cars.

■ If you feel you need to use a defibrillator on someone, start cardiopulmonary resuscitation (rescue breaths and chest compressions) immediately while getting other bystanders on board – one to call 999 and another to locate the nearest defibrillator.

■ The instructions for using it are on the tin. You press a button, attach the sticky pads to the patient’s skin, and if there’s no heartbeat it sends a shock.

■ You don’t need to be a doctor to use one.