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AEDs missing near the scene of three-quarters of cardiac arrests
One city's public challenge helped locate AEDs, opening the door for aid from social networkers worldwide.
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More than 75% of cardiac arrests happen too far from an automated external defibrillator for the lifesaving device to be obtained quickly enough to increase the risk for survival, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Researcher Raina Merchant, MD, MS, assistant professor and emergency medicine physician in the department of emergency medicine, and colleagues mapped the locations of 2,314 AEDs and 3,483 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the Philadelphia region. Only 7% of cardiac arrests occurred within 200 feet, or a 2-minute walk, from an AED. Twenty-one percent occurred within 600 feet of a device and 10% within 400 feet.
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Screen shot of the MyHeartMap app. Reprinted with permission from:
Raina Merchant, MD, MS |
“Despite thousands of [AEDs] in the community, our results show they are usually not readily available during cardiac arrests,” Merchant said in a press release.
Primarily, the researchers found AEDs were most commonly located in schools and on university campuses (30%), office buildings (22%), medical facilities (12%), government buildings (9%) and residential buildings (4%).
These data may offer important clues about why, despite CPR and AED awareness campaigns across the United States, cardiac arrest rates remain poor — less than 10% — in most areas of the country.
Thinking outside the box
The researchers said their findings underscore the need to not only place AEDs more strategically in communities, but also to find innovative ways to help the public easily locate and use the devices in emergencies. To achieve these goals, they looked to the public and created an opportunity for a contest using social networking and crowdsourcing.
This winter, the Penn Medicine team conducted the MyHeartMap Challenge, a contest that sent Philadelphia residents to the streets to locate, capture and map the locations of all of the city’s AEDs, using a smartphone app. More than 350 teams and residents took to the streets starting on Jan. 31, and located more than 1,500 AEDs in about 800 buildings in the city. To incentivize public participation, the researchers awarded the person or team that identified the most AEDs during 8 weeks. Two first-prize winners located more than 430 AEDs; each was awarded a $9,000 prize.
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“People are increasingly ‘networked’ and using social media for everything. It’s important that the research and science community understand more about how we can engage people through these new tools to help improve health and health care,” Merchant said in an interview with Cardiology Today.
Bridging gaps in awareness, response
Data collected from the MyHeartMap challenge will be used to create a mobile app to help bystanders locate the nearest AED during emergencies. It will also be provided to 911 operators to direct bystanders to AEDs to use while paramedics are en route to the scene. AED locations could also be periodically updated using these tools.
Merchant said she hopes this project will be implemented in other cities throughout the country.
“Despite the lifesaving potential of AEDs, they are of no value if they cannot be located and brought to the victim. There is no US map of AED locations, nor do we even know where all the AEDs are located,” Merchant and David A. Asch, MD, MBA, of the Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania and the VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion, wrote in a perspective published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. – by Casey Murphy and Katie Kalvaitis
For more information:
• Merchant RM. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes. 2012;5:241-243.
• Merchant RM. How well does AED location match cardiac arrest location? Presented at: the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Annual Meeting; May 9-12, 2012; Chicago.
Disclosure: Drs. Merchant and Asch report no relevant financial disclosures. The pilot study was funded by Cardiac Science, Philips Medical, Physio-Control and Zoll Medical.