At a meeting a few days ago, I brought along the January 27, 2011 New England Journal of Medicine article by Gust H. Bardy, M.D. "A Critic's Assessment of Our Approach to Cardiac Arrest." Since NEJM is copyright protected, I gave the original article serially to several health care professionals.
Bardy observed that success with home automated external defibrillators wasn't as good as the experience when they are used in public places and posits that the sudden collapse of a spouse may be associated with a delay in the ability of the survivor to call for help, which accounts for the disparity.
On reading the article, one of the doctors asked "why doesn't the home AED automatically call 911 and provide an alert and address when it is removed from its holder?"
If there is an AED expert among my readers, please answer the doctor's question (I will publish the answers) so that we may improve the likelihood of recovery from home cardiac arrest. Are there cost, technical, bureaucratic or other barriers to this solution?
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