SAN FRANCISCO (dpa) – They are installed in banks and shops, in the Fisherman’s Wharf tourist district of San Francisco and in the city hall. More than 100 of these easy-to-use lifesavers are waiting and ready in the West Coast city if passers-by fall ill.
The small defibrillator machines are marked with a heart and a flash of lightning and are conspicuous in places used by the public.
A defibrillator helps prevent death from cardiac arrest by delivering an electric shock to help reestablish normal contraction rhythms in a heart that is not beating properly.
They are relatively cheap and easy to use. Even a child could help save a life in an emergency.
Each year around 25,000 people die in the United States of a sudden heart attack, the American Heart Association says.
Abnormal heart rhythms are the most common cause of these cardiac arrests. The most serious cardiac rhythm disturbance is ventricular fibrillation, where the lower chambers quiver and the heart cannot pump any blood.
Collapse and sudden death follows unless medical help is provided immediately.
Karen Strain, of the Heart Association in San Francisco, said: “With every minute that treatment is not provided with an electric shock the victim’s chances of survival sink by 10 per cent.”
The devices are so easy to use that even people with no previous practice can handle them, she points out.
Other countries would like to imitate the scheme. The German Bjoern-Steiger Foundation, which claims to be Europe’s biggest emergency call system provider, believes every household should have a defibrillator.
The foundation, based in Winnenden in Baden-Wuerttemberg state, says the death of star conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli, 54, earlier this year, who collapsed with a heart attack during a concert in Berlin, could have been avoided had one of the devices been available in the concert hall.
American health organizations say the last five years have seen tens of thousands of defibrillators introduced across the United States. There are no exact figures of how many lives have been saved, but success stories abound.
“We have treated five people with electric shocks and they have all survived,” reported Joe Wilson of San Francisco airport fire department.
In the last two years 56 of the defibrillator machines have been placed around the airport where they can be easily seen by travellers.
John Brown, head of state emergency medicine in San Francisco, wants to have the devices fitted in all the city’s buses and streetcars.
“If we can treat the victim within one or two minutes of collapse there is a 70-per-cent survival chance,” he said.
Emergency crews need an average of nine minutes to reach a patient in an emergency. Brown said the devices are “foolproof”. They are simple to understand and use for lay rescuers.
As soon as the device is opened a recorded voice gives instructions, telling the rescuer how to place two cushions on the victim’s chest before pressing a button which delivers the electric charge to the heart.
Doctors at the University of Seattle tested the use of the devices with 12-year-old school pupils. The results showed that they understood the instructions quickly.
To remove any trepidation about using the machines, California state passed a law absolving defibrillator users of any legal redress should patients be injured during attempts to treat them.
American health organizations believe that the public’s access to the devices will in the long term save up to 100,000 lives a year.
