Study: Bystander use of defibrillators saves lives

Mike Papale knows he was lucky.

Papale, 28, was 17 when he went into cardiac arrest while working at a Wallingford basketball camp. The building had no automated external defibrillator, nor anyone who knew how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

His life, it seemed, was wholly dependent on whether emergency medical services would arrive in time.

An emergency medical technician working in the building next door heard the 911 call and rushed over to start CPR. Papale knows it was a close call.

With that in mind, he eventually founded In a Heartbeat, an organization that provides defibrillators to schools, churches and other establishments.

Had one been available for him 11 years ago “I wouldn’t have been as close to dying as I was,” said Papale, a volunteer with the American Heart Association.

A new study backs up his theory, showing people are more likely to survive cardiac arrest if a bystander uses a defibrillator while waiting for emergency medical services to arrive. The analysis, led by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and partly funded by the National Institutes of Health, suggests 1,700 additional lives were saved each year in the U.S. from bystander use of defibrillators.

Cardiac arrest is when a person’s heart suddenly stops beating. Unless treated within minutes, the person usually dies because blood is no longer being pumped to the brain and the rest of the body.

An automated external defibrillator, or AED, is a portable, battery-operated device that checks the heart’s rhythm and, if something is abnormal, can send an electric shock to the heart to restore a normal rhythm. AEDs are typically in public places like office buildings, schools and shopping malls.

The Johns Hopkins-led team analyzed data collected between 2011 and 2015 from a network of six U.S. and three Canadian regions. During that time, emergency medical services treated nearly 50,000 cardiac arrests in places other than a hospital. Of those who had an initially shockable heart rhythm observed in public, 469 were shocked first by a bystander using an AED and 2,031 were shocked first by EMS personnel when they arrived.

The analysis showed a greater chance of survival when a bystander used an AED. In addition, people were more likely to survive with minimal disability after cardiac arrest when a bystander used an AED. The more time that elapsed before emergency medical services arrived, the larger the benefit of bystanders using an AED.

The findings didn’t surprise Cathi Kellett, CPR training center coordinator at Griffin Hospital in Derby — though she did offer a caveat to the findings.

“The AEDs are wonderful inventions,” she said. “But there’s one thing people forget, which is that AEDs alone aren’t enough.”

Ideally, when someone goes into cardiac arrest, someone can call 911 and start CPR while another person runs for an AED, Kellett said. After a 911 call about cardiac arrest is made, an estimated 4 to 10 minutes may pass before emergency medical services arrive. Typically, the sooner someone intervenes before EMS arrives, Kellett said, the better their chances for survival.

Papale agreed. After his cardiac arrest, he learned he had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick, which can make it hard for the heart to pump blood. The building in which he went into arrest now has an AED, and Papale said he knows it has saved at least one person’s life.

Knowing how to perform CPR and/or use an AED is crucial to someone who in cardiac distress, Papale said.

“The response time from EMS is pretty good, but they usually depend on bystanders to do something,” he said.

Contributed photo / Courtesy of the American Heart Association A new study, partly funded by the National Institutes of Health, found that people are more likely to survive a cardiac arrest if a bystander uses an automated external defibrillator like the ones pictured here while waiting for emergency medical...