The Medical journal of Australia
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Meta Analysis
Automatic external defibrillators: changing the way we manage ventricular fibrillation.
To discuss recent developments in automatic defibrillation and to review the evidence that first-responders equipped with automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) improve survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. ⋯ Meta-analysis suggests that equipping first-responders with AEDs increases the probability of survival to hospital discharge after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (odds ratio, 1.74; 95% CI, 1.27-2.38; P < 0.001). However, most of the studies lacked sufficient power to draw definitive conclusions. Until the impact of wide deployment of AEDs is fully understood, first-responder defibrillation in Australia should only occur as part of coordinated multicentre research studies.