"Even so, never stick the pads on someone who isn't actually in cardiac arrest because if it gets it wrong it probably would drop them into cardiac arrest."
MD here, I strongly disagree - the AED is designed for use by minimally trained people. And the chances of a shock being wrongly administered is many times lower than the chance of saving a life if they are in a shockable rhythm.
I think it's really hard to definitively diagnose cardiac arrest in the first few seconds to minutes, even for some medical personnel - even if you have no cardiac output, a person often still has some residual apparent breathing ("agonal breathing") which often leads people to delay CPR, and delay applying the AED/monitor+defibrillator.
Perhaps we can agree there is no point placing it on patients who can talk to you? :) But if as an untrained person you applied it to every person who lost consciousness in front of you, you would do a lot more good than harm, with almost zero absolute risk of harm.
> Perhaps we can agree there is no point placing it on patients who can talk to you?
Yes, that's kind of what I was getting at.
Or to put it another way "don't fuck about with the AED because it's not a toy and its safety systems are not infallible". If you stick it on someone unresponsive - and you've got enough reason to suspect they're in a shockable state - it probably won't make them any worse.
Like my old trauma instructor used to say, "You can't make dead any deader!"
MD here, I strongly disagree - the AED is designed for use by minimally trained people. And the chances of a shock being wrongly administered is many times lower than the chance of saving a life if they are in a shockable rhythm.
I think it's really hard to definitively diagnose cardiac arrest in the first few seconds to minutes, even for some medical personnel - even if you have no cardiac output, a person often still has some residual apparent breathing ("agonal breathing") which often leads people to delay CPR, and delay applying the AED/monitor+defibrillator.
Perhaps we can agree there is no point placing it on patients who can talk to you? :) But if as an untrained person you applied it to every person who lost consciousness in front of you, you would do a lot more good than harm, with almost zero absolute risk of harm.