Not if you're having a heart attack. That's a mechanical problem - your heart is gunked up with fatty crud and cannot pump blood. The symptoms are chest pain, sudden weakness, and shortness of breath. *Usually* you don't just drop to the floor clutching your chest.
You're thinking of a cardiac arrest, which is an electrical problem - your heart is not getting the right pulses to generate the right muscle contractions to pump. An AED will absolutely help here and you should not wait to start using it. Just grab the AED that's right there and open the lid, switch it on, and wait for it to start telling you what to do.
It's very unlikely it could ever shock a patient who wasn't actually having a cardiac arrest because they detect the heart's electrical signals and look for a "shockable rhythm". If the rhythm looks normal, or looks like one that won't be improved by a quick zap, it won't do it. Even so, never stick the pads on someone who isn't actually in cardiac arrest because if it gets it wrong it probably *would* drop them into cardiac arrest.
Pretty much every public space has a defib now. Often they're in a box with a locked door which you can get the code for from the emergency services operator. You're going to need to ring for an ambulance anyway so this doesn't waste time.
The main thing though is just start CPR and get someone to call an ambulance. You might just save someone's life with that, maybe even today.
"Even so, never stick the pads on someone who isn't actually in cardiac arrest because if it gets it wrong it probably would drop them into cardiac arrest."
MD here, I strongly disagree - the AED is designed for use by minimally trained people. And the chances of a shock being wrongly administered is many times lower than the chance of saving a life if they are in a shockable rhythm.
I think it's really hard to definitively diagnose cardiac arrest in the first few seconds to minutes, even for some medical personnel - even if you have no cardiac output, a person often still has some residual apparent breathing ("agonal breathing") which often leads people to delay CPR, and delay applying the AED/monitor+defibrillator.
Perhaps we can agree there is no point placing it on patients who can talk to you? :) But if as an untrained person you applied it to every person who lost consciousness in front of you, you would do a lot more good than harm, with almost zero absolute risk of harm.
> Perhaps we can agree there is no point placing it on patients who can talk to you?
Yes, that's kind of what I was getting at.
Or to put it another way "don't fuck about with the AED because it's not a toy and its safety systems are not infallible". If you stick it on someone unresponsive - and you've got enough reason to suspect they're in a shockable state - it probably won't make them any worse.
Like my old trauma instructor used to say, "You can't make dead any deader!"
Heart attack (myocardial infarction) leads to cardiac arrest all the time. That's how people die from heart attacks.
If someone has a myocardial infarction and then goes into cardiac arrest with a shockable rhythm, shocking is absolutely the appropriate thing to do. (But it is only a temporizing measure - if the person does not get treatment for the underlying myocardial infarction, they will simply go into cardiac arrest again.)
Not if you're having a heart attack. That's a mechanical problem - your heart is gunked up with fatty crud and cannot pump blood. The symptoms are chest pain, sudden weakness, and shortness of breath. *Usually* you don't just drop to the floor clutching your chest.
You're thinking of a cardiac arrest, which is an electrical problem - your heart is not getting the right pulses to generate the right muscle contractions to pump. An AED will absolutely help here and you should not wait to start using it. Just grab the AED that's right there and open the lid, switch it on, and wait for it to start telling you what to do.
It's very unlikely it could ever shock a patient who wasn't actually having a cardiac arrest because they detect the heart's electrical signals and look for a "shockable rhythm". If the rhythm looks normal, or looks like one that won't be improved by a quick zap, it won't do it. Even so, never stick the pads on someone who isn't actually in cardiac arrest because if it gets it wrong it probably *would* drop them into cardiac arrest.
Pretty much every public space has a defib now. Often they're in a box with a locked door which you can get the code for from the emergency services operator. You're going to need to ring for an ambulance anyway so this doesn't waste time.
The main thing though is just start CPR and get someone to call an ambulance. You might just save someone's life with that, maybe even today.