Public access AED success in Japan

Public access AED success in Japan

Public access AED success in Japan: AEDs are automatic external defibrillators which give instructions to the lay operators and can be used by the lay public for resuscitating a person in cardiac arrest. AEDs are kept in public places where large number of people arrive as in airports. Japan is a country with nationwide access to AEDs. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Tetsuhisa Kitamura, Taku Iwami, Takashi Kawamura, Ken Nagao, Hideharu Tanaka and Atsushi Hiraide, the Implementation Working Group for the All-Japan Utstein Registry of the Fire and Disaster Management Agency evaluated the benefit of these devices in Japan. They included 312,319 adults who had an out of hospital cardiac arrest over a period of two years in this study. Of these, 12,631 had ventricular fibrillation and a witnessed cardiac arrest due to cardiac cause. Four hundred and sixty two of them received AED shocks administered by lay persons. While 14.4% of those with a witnessed cardiac arrest due to ventricular fibrillation was alive at one month with minimal neurological deficit, 31.6% of those who received AED shocks had a similar status. For all those who received early defibrillation regardless of whether it was administered by a paramedic or a bystander, there was good neurologic outcome. The figures improved as the number of public access AEDs increased from 1 per square kilometer of inhabited area to 4 or more.

Reference

1. Tetsuhisa Kitamura, Taku Iwami, Takashi Kawamura, Ken Nagao, Hideharu Tanaka, Atsushi Hiraide, Implementation Working Group for the All-Japan Utstein Registry of the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. Nationwide public-access defibrillation in Japan. N Engl J Med. 2010 Mar 18;362(11):994-1004.