AEDs save lives.
There is no doubt about that.
But what exactly are they and why should you buy one from Home Hazard Prevention (HHP)?
First, a little history.
Simply, your heart is a battery that generates its own electricity to power and pump itself in an organized fashion. The pumping action in turn moves blood throughout the body and keeps you alive. Occasionally, the heart acts up and doesn’t pump correctly. This is sometimes called Fibrillation, which means that the heart is not pumping in any sort of organized pattern. This chaotic, unorganized pumping often leads to sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and death. SCA affects nearly 400,000 Americans annually. When the heart stops beating, CPR can manually push the blood and attempt to sustain life. But we really need our hearts to generate its own electricity to keep firing correctly.
This is where AEDs come in. AEDs de-fibrillate the heart. During a SCA, hands-only CPR will pump blood, but only AEDs will jump start the heart. This small amount of external electricity, when applied to your chest and heart muscle, will hopefully restart the heart and correct its irregular pumping actions. Think of it like jump starting your car battery. The car works fine normally, but it needs a new battery. Similar to your body. The heart works, but it needs to be jump started to work correctly and to work much longer.
At HHP, we have trained hundreds of people in CPR and proper use of AEDs. Most people are very receptive and competent in their CPR skills when they leave our sessions. But many feel less than excited about using AEDs. In fact, they should prefer to use our AEDs! Hands-only CPR is very labor intensive and requires you to continually touch another person to save their lives. This has a high rate of survival (about 65%). But it’s physically demanding on the rescuer! Using AEDs is simple. So simple in fact, that it requires the rescuer to touch the victim once, then press a Green Button, and then listen to the voice prompts from the machine. The AED coaching is always there- meaning you do not have to remember or count anything! If there is a second rescuer around, we always want one person to apply the AED and the second to continue CPR until the AED tells you to stop. Correct use of CPR and AEDs increases the odds of survival from about 8% to over 80%!
So next time you learn CPR, ask about how you can purchase and AED from HHP. You’ve already learned the hardest part- CPR. Now learn the easy part- correct use of AEDs! And, we replace your AED pads for FREE and will give you a second AED FREE for each life that is saved!!! (Select models only.)