How Does AED Work During Sudden Cardiac Arrest?

You’ve probably seen an AED – Automated External Defibrillator at the airport, mall, grocery, or gym. Generally, AEDs are present in the cabinets on the wall like fire extinguishers. They have become more common despite the steady increase in the AED prices.

However, awareness of how important an AED in a medical emergency is growing day after day. Well, that’s a good thing. The use of an AED plays a key role in surviving Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) victims. SCA is one of the main causes of death for adults throughout the United States.

Over 350,000 adults die annually from SCA in the United States. If you know how this device works, you can use one without fear and increase the chance of survival up to 50%. Therefore, taking Online CPR AED First Aid Certification Training makes sense.

Understanding AED –

AED stands for Automatic External Defibrillator.

Automatic – AED checks heart condition and decides whether a patient needs shock.

External – AED isn’t present inside your body.

Defibrillator – AED will defibrillate the heart of a SCA victim.

Heart is a sophisticated conglomeration of integrated muscles and valves that help in contraction and relaxation to pump out blood around the body. It’s important for all heart muscles to work together to achieve this objective.

What Do You Mean By Sudden Cardiac Arrest?

Sudden cardiac arrest is a situation when all of those muscles get thrown off electrically. The heart is alive and moving; but no longer pumping out blood. The heart gets a bit seizure, jittering, quivering and laboring without moving blood to brain and without supplying itself with blood it requires to stay alive.

When SCA happens, a victim loses consciousness and stops breathing. Brain damage starts mounting within 4 minutes. If you don’t use an AED within ten minutes, there’ll be little chance of survival.

For every minute that passes without defibrillation or using an AED, the victim loses around 10% chance to live. Now you can see how it’s necessary to get that defibrillator to the patient as soon as possible.

What to Do During Sudden Cardiac Arrest Situation?

When a person collapses, isn’t breathing, is conscious or only gasping, do CPR immediately until the AED arrives. Upon the arrival of AED, it needs to be switched on. This device will take voice prompts that will tell you exactly what to do.

Keep the electric pads on the bare chest of the patient as the images printed right on the pads. When these pads hit the skin, the AED allows you to check the heart condition and looks for ventricular fibrillation that affects the heart rhythm.

If a defibrillator senses a heart rhythm, it’ll let you know that a shock is suggested. AED will charge itself and tell you push a button to deliver shocks. The shock will start traveling around the body through the heart.

The shock stops all activities, resets the parts of the heart that controls the coordination and releases the heart. When this fibrillation has been stopped, the heart will start pumping again. Remember that the faster the AED is used, the better the chance of survival rate.

Final Consideration –

If you find someone unconscious and unsure they’re breathing perfectly, turn on the AED and follow the instructions accordingly. It’s easy to increase the person’s chance of survival exponentially.

Come and take Online CPR AED First Aid Certification at CPR Professor. We specialize in providing more comprehensive universal CPR AED First Aid Certification Online. For more information about our online safety training course, feel free to contact us right now at info@cprprofessor.com.