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Cardiac arrest usually happens outside hospital far away from a cardiac arrest team who can shock some sense back into your heart with a defibrillator. Using cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and a defibrillator more than doubled the number of survivors reaching hospital when compared to using CPR alone. A common first sign that you have coronary heart disease is that you drop down with a cardiac arrest. It's the heart going into ventricular fibrillation - where it quivers rather than beats - and usually happens outside hospital far away from a cardiac arrest team who can shock some sense back into your heart. That's why cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is important, as well as paramedics who can arrive within minutes with a defibrillator. Others have argued that with the advent of defibrillators - which can diagnose and shock the person automatically - what's needed are defibrillators in public places like shopping centres. The is especially so in rural locations where there are no paramedics. It requires large scale training of people in the community about how to use the devices and perform CPR, but two recent papers suggest that it does save lives. In one study, it more than doubled the number of survivors reaching hospital when CPR plus defibrillation was compared to CPR alone. The numbers were small though, and it didn't deal with cardiac arrest at home, where the survival rate is low. So the issue for politicians is whether the cost of public access defibrillation per life saved is money well spent?
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