Home Automatic External Defibrillator Training for High-Risk Patients

In the past 3 decades, advances in the understanding of the resuscitation of cardiac arrest have provided opportunities to strengthen the links in the chain of survival. Despite the apparent progress, however, survival has remained poor. Cardiac arrest is a leading cause of mortality in the US, accounting for up to 450,000 deaths annually. Eighty percent of all cardiac arrest events are caused by the arrhythmia, ventricular fibrillation. Prompt electrical defibrillation is the only effective therapy. The time interval from collapse to attempted defibrillation is the most important determinant of outcome. The chance of survival decreases on average by approximately 10-15% for every minute that elapses prior to attempted defibrillation. Thus, methods to decrease the time interval between collapse and electrical defibrillation represent a true opportunity to improve survival from cardiac arrest.

Even in communities where emergency medical systems are best situated to treat cardiac arrest, response intervals are on average greater than 6 minutes. The development of the automated external defibrillator (AED) provides the possibility to decrease the interval from collapse to defibrillation by enabling persons outside the traditional emergency medical services response system who are typically not trained in rhythm recognition to deliver life-saving therapy. The AED is a device that can be applied in case of cardiac arrest and will assess the heart rhythm and instruct the bystander whether to provide a shock. In addition, approximately 75% of cardiac arrests occur in the home and are witnessed or found by a family member. Thus, a family responder AED program, where family members of persons at relatively high risk of cardiac arrest are equipped and trained with AEDs, may in part, decrease the interval from collapse to shock in cardiac arrest and improve outcome. Persons who have recently been hospitalized for an acute coronary syndrome are known to be at elevated risk for cardiac arrest. Indeed, the provision of an AED for home use is already in practice. However, it is not clear what method should be used to train family members in this potentially lifesaving set of skills. The purpose of the proposed study is to evaluate 4 different AED training methods to determine if the training approaches differentially affect AED skill retention or psychological status. Although the programs span the spectrum from streamlined to personalized and intensive, each approach constitutes a potential real-world, generalizable AED training method.