1. Principles of External Defibrillators
- Author
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Ignacio Fernández Lozano, Victor Castro, Cristina Mitroi, Jorge Toquero, and Hugo E. Delgado
- Subjects
medicine.medical_specialty ,business.industry ,Defibrillation ,medicine.medical_treatment ,Pulseless ventricular tachycardia ,education ,medicine.disease ,humanities ,External defibrillators ,Shock (circulatory) ,Internal medicine ,Ventricular fibrillation ,cardiovascular system ,Cardiology ,Medicine ,medicine.symptom ,business ,Early defibrillation ,Collapse (medical) ,health care economics and organizations - Abstract
Electrical defibrillation is the only effective therapy for cardiac arrest caused by ventricular fibrillation (VF) [1, 2] or pulseless ventricular tachycardia (VT). Scientific evidence to sup‐ port early defibrillation is overwhelming [3-5], being delay from collapse to delivery of the first shock the single most important determinant of survival [6, 7]. If defibrillation is deliv‐ ered promptly, survival rates as high as 75% have been reported [8, 9]. The chance of a fa‐ vourable outcome decline at a rate of about 10% for each minute cardiac defibrillation is delayed [3, 10].
- Published
- 2013