Contributor: Aaron Lessen, MD
Educational Pearls:
Quick background info
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Cardiac arrest is when the heart stops pumping blood for any reason. This is different from a heart attack in which the heart is still working but the muscle itself is starting to die.
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One cause of cardiac arrest is when the electrical signals are very disrupted in the heart and start following chaotic patterns such as Ventricular tachycardia (VTach) and Ventricular fibrillation (VFib)
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One of the only ways to save a person whose heart is in VFib or VTach is to jolt the heart with electricity and terminate the dangerous arrhythmia.
A recent study in the Netherlands looked at how important the time delay is from when cardiac arrest is first identified to when a defibrillation shock from an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) is actually given.
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Their main take-away: each minute defibrillation is delayed drops the survival rate by 6%!
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These findings reinforce the importance of rapid AED deployment and early defibrillation strategies in prehospital cardiac arrest response.
References
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Stieglis, R., Verkaik, B. J., Tan, H. L., Koster, R. W., van Schuppen, H., & van der Werf, C. (2025). Association Between Delay to First Shock and Successful First-Shock Ventricular Fibrillation Termination in Patients With Witnessed Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest. Circulation, 151(3), 235–244. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.124.069834
Summarized by Jeffrey Olson, MS3 | Edited by Meg Joyce, MS1 & Jorge Chalit, OMS3
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