The goals of this study were to explore whether the use of an automatic-external- defibrillator (AED) by an untrained layperson would adversely affect the quality of compression-only cardiopulmonary-resuscitation (CPR) provided at the same time and decrease the defibrillation delay in a simulated out-of-hospital-cardiac-arrest (OHCA) -situation.
The study was a training mannequin simulation of an OHCA-scenario comparing participants performing dispatcher-assisted compression-only CPR with subjects who in addition retrieved and used an AED with dispatcher assistance.
In this study, laypersons who had basic CPR (without AED) training could all perform dispatcher assisted CPR relatively well. In the AED group, laypersons were able to safely use an AED in a simulated OHCA-situation.
This study suggests that adding an AED to the dispatcher assisted CPR protocol does not markedly decrease the hands-on-time nor the quality of CPR with layperson provided help in an OHCA-scenario and that it would decrease the out- of-hospital defibrillation delays and thus improve survival.
