PMID: 9422170Dec 1, 1994Paper

Semi-automatic external defibrillation

European Journal of Emergency Medicine : Official Journal of the European Society for Emergency Medicine
P MolsJ P Flamand

Abstract

Malignant arrhythmia, which is responsible for most of the out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, is ventricular fibrillation (VF). The best treatment of VF is a controlled electric shock on the chest administered in a short delay. The emergency medical technicians (EMTs) qualified to carry out this treatment in Belgium and in districts often succeed in arriving on the spot 8 minutes earlier than the people of the Service Mobile d'Urgence et de Réanimation (SMUR). The delegation of defibrillation to ambulance crew members however implies a specific teaching, training and a medical control. The Brussels experience shows that semi-automatic external defibrillation by EMT-Ds (SAED) is feasible when criteria for applying SAED in the pre-hospital phase are applicable.

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