Libraries need defibrillators

Over 200,000 Americans die of sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year. In an effort to increase layman response and possibly save thousands of lives, City Councilmember Joseph Addabbo has cosponsored legislation that would require installing automated external defibrillators (AED) in public libraries.
The legislation is one of a series of regulations calling for placement of AED’s in certain public places, such as federal facilities, high schools and now libraries. “These life saving measures ought to be accessible to people when medical emergency arises,” Addabbo said.
Unlike manual internal and external defibrillators operable only by trained professionals, AED’s automatically analyze the heart rhythm and if needed, send an electrical current to restart the heart, making it easy to use by laymen or bystanders with little or no training.
Currently the layman success rate dealing with out-of-hospital cardiac arrests is only 2 percent, and waiting for medical professionals to arrive at the scene oftentimes proves fatal, since a patient’s survival rate diminishes by 10 percent for each minute without defibrillation. After 10 minutes, resuscitation seldom succeeds because the brain and other vital organs have been deprived of oxygen and nutrients for too long. Every minute in cardiac arrest causes irreparable damage to the tissues and organs of the person even if the heart rhythm is restored. According to the Heart Rhythm Foundation, 95 percent of victims of cardiac arrest die before they reach a hospital or other source of emergency help.
Especially in combination with CPR, the use of AEDs’ can increase survival rate up to 80 percent. In the first ten months after Chicago’s Midway and O’Hare airports installed automated defibrillators, 9 out of the 14 victims of cardiac arrest that occurred survived.