Acute cardiac care & resuscitation
Adherence to automated external defibrillator instructions during real-life in-hospital cardiac arrest: an analysis of device data
Authors' conclusion
Adherence to core AED prompts was high, whereas interruptive and corrective instructions were disregarded more frequently. AEDs for professionals should incorporate pre-analysis countdowns or alert tones to enhance user compliance. To ensure sustained high-quality compressions, devices should provide motivational-corrective instructions and prompt timely rescuer switches.
Study context
- Population
- Professionals responding to in-hospital cardiac arrest with automated external defibrillators (AEDs), real AED data from a German hospital between 2007 and 2024cases analyzed among 466 AED files
- Participants
- 419 professionals
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Prompt adherence ranged
15.3% to 81.1%
"start CPR" followed
81.1%
"press shock button" followed
77.7%
"push harder" followed
15.3%
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
Mean chest compression (CC) depth after the "push harder" prompt
- Mean CC depth increased
- from 3.26 cm to 3.66 cm, 3.61 cm, 3.51 cm
- p < 0.001
Mean CC rate · first interval
- Mean CC rate improved only within the first interval
- from 89.8 cpm to 102.2 cpm
- p < 0.001
High-quality CC with adherence to "push harder"
- Adherence to "push harder" associated with high-quality CC
- 54.6% of cases
- p < 0.001
Original publication
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it