The Importance of Defibrillators
Access CardioSystems was a private medical device company that excelled in the innovation, manufacturing, and distribution of several automatic external defibrillation (AED) technologies all over the globe. Based in Concord, Massachusetts, Access CardioSystems was established over ten years ago in response to a global need for effective and easy to use defibrillator devices. While defibrillators are best used by professionally trained medics and first responders, devices need to be made available in public facilities and designed with ease of use in mind because of the vital importance of early defibrillation after a cardiac event. Any instance of Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) is best treated with immediate defibrillation, with the rate of success diminishing by up to 7 to 9 percent every minute after the initial incident. This means that a first responder who arrives 10 minutes later, has at best, a 30 percent chance of reviving the victim. Due to these statistics, medics and analysts believe defibrillators should be made as available to the public as readily as fire extinguishers are available. The dearth of defibrillators in accessible public spaces is, however, only part of the challenge. For example, only one percent of police vehicles carry defibrillator devices. The statistics of firefighters, 10 percent of whose vehicles carry them, look better in comparison, but only when these numbers near 100 percent, as with the 90 percent of emergency medical vehicles, will survival rates of SCA victims have the potential to truly increase significantly.