April 16, 2004—Cardiac Science, a manufacturer of automated public-access defibrillators (AEDs) and provider of associated training and services, announced that WellPoint, the nation’s second largest health insurer, has included 84 Cardiac Science Powerheart AEDs as part of its private access defibrillation program in 51 WellPoint facilities.
Currently 95 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. According the American Heart Association (AHA), 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 and private access defibrillation programs has achieved survival rates as high as 74 percent if patients received defibrillation within 3 minutes. The AHA 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 corporate workplace facilities, municipal office buildings, industrial plants, schools, colleges, universities, casinos, golf courses, cruise ships, sports arenas, health clubs and airplanes and airports. Results from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and AHA-sponsored public access defibrillation study (the PAD Study) of automated defibrillators in public places found that deploying AEDs and training citizens in CPR and AED use doubles the chances of surviving SCA.
For more information, contact Cardiac Science.
