| Success with a defib was almost as small. Quite frankly, unless someone is doing CPR almost from the moment of arrest, then the window of opportunity for medical intervention is not sufficiently long to allow for the chain of events to get a medic to the scene.
Shopping centers, airports et all recognise this and have defibs close at hand, and plenty of people who have been trained to do CPR. Note that in a crisis, many such people fail to act and the outcome is poor.
Places like Seattle teach the whole population in giving CPR, the upshot of which there is likely to be at least ONE bystander who has the wit to do something.
In my book, you could train most eight year olds to do life support CPR, even if it was just the chest compressions (which has been shown to be quite effective), and it should be part of the national curriculum.
YMMV |