January 10, 2005—Cardiac Science, Inc. a manufacturer of life-saving automatic public-access defibrillators (AEDs), has been selected to provide AEDs and comprehensive AED/CPR training and AED program management services for a county-wide Public Access Defibrillator (PAD) program launched by the City of Nashville and surrounding Davidson County, Tennessee.
“The Heartbeat of Nashville” PAD program, which has been approved by the Metropolitan Government of Nashville, Davidson County and Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell, includes a public-private partnership agreement between the Metropolitan Government and Cardiac Science.
The PAD program is being coordinated by the Nashville Fire Department, which in addition to planning the deployment of AEDs, is reaching out to private citizens through a public awareness campaign on the importance of defibrillation therapy and the use of AEDs to treat victims of a massive heart attack, also called sudden cardiac arrest (“SCA”).
According to Nashville Director-Fire Chief Stephen Halford the goal of the PAD project is to significantly increase cardiac arrest survival rates in the local community by making AEDs more accessible in a wide variety of settings and educating citizens about the Chain of Survival, an emergency intervention process that includes early defibrillation and CPR.
“The program aims to dramatically improve the SCA survival rate in Nashville and Davidson County, which currently stands at eight percent, to upwards of 40 or 50 percent,” said Nashville Director-Fire Chief Stephen Halford. “Nashville’s goal is to deploy at least 1,000 AEDs in public facilities and highly trafficked public places throughout the county within the next few years.”
Nashville’s new PAD program makes it the latest major U.S. city to partner with Cardiac Science, joining San Diego, Minneapolis and Miami.
Currently more than 90 percent of SCA victims die before reaching the hospital due to the length of time it takes for emergency personnel to arrive on the scene. In all, about 340,000 Americans die each year from SCA. In fact, a person’s chance of survival is reduced by about 10 percent for every minute spent waiting for a potentially life-saving defibrillation shock. Implementation of a successful public access defibrillation program has achieved survival rates as high as 74 percent if patients received defibrillation within 3 minutes.
The American Heart Association estimates that as many as 50,000 of these lives can be saved if an automated external defibrillator is available at the time of the emergency, and someone is nearby who has been trained to use it. AEDs are becoming more widely available and are being used in a variety of settings, including airplanes and airports, government workplaces, office buildings, industrial plants, schools, universities, casinos, golf courses, sports arenas, homes and health clubs.
For more information, contact Cardiac Science.
