Placing defibrillators in public places is having very little impact on survival rates from cardiac arrest.

Installing a defibrillator - a machine that shocks the heart back into a normal rhythm - in an airport, shopping mall or car park could help increase the chances of surviving a cardiac arrest. But such schemes are not actually having the desired impact, say researchers at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

They examined all the out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occurring between 1991 and 1998. Of the 15,189 arrests, 79 per cent occurred in a private home. Another three per cent occurred in potential locations for defibrillators - such as buses and car parks - and the rest occurred in public places thought suitable for the equipment, including shops and sports centres.

From this data, the researchers predict that locating defibrillators in all public places would increase survival rate from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest from five per cent to 6.3 per cent, while locating them in potentially suitable places too would lead to a tiny increase in survival to 6.5 per cent. A better way of increasing the survival rate, they say, would be to train more non-ambulance crew in resuscitation - that is, get the police, the fire service and the general public more involved in first aid measures to deal with cardiac arrest.

Source

British Medical Journal 7th September 2002