Abstract
The American Heart Association has included the use of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) for early defibrillation by first responders as a standard of care for in-hospital ventricular fibrillation (VF). However, there are as yet no reports on the in-hospital early defibrillation program in Japan. To make the program successful, an early defibrillation capability by all nurses is essential. Recent studies have indicated that hospital nurses can easily use AEDs, because AEDs preclude the need for extensive training on ECG recognition, and there is also no fear of delivering shocks to a patient. Therefore, the use of AEDs can facilitate the introduction of the in-hospital early defibrillation program. Here, we report the case of a 70-year-old hospitalized man who developed an episode of VF outside our critical care area. Using AED, a nurse delivered shock to revert the VF, and succeeded in restoring the patient's circulation before the arrival of a physician. The delay between recognition of the VF and the delivery of the first shock was under 2 minutes. The physician arrived in the ward 74 seconds after the delivery of the shock. This case highlights the importance of the ability of nurses to successfully use defibrillation to strengthen the in-hospital chain-of-survival. The use of AEDs may thus promote the in-hospital chain-of-survival.
