The challenges and possibilities of public access defibrillation

Out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrest ( OHCA ) is a major health problem that affects approximately four hundred and thousand patients annually in the United States alone. It is a major challenge for the emergency medical system as decreased survival rates are directly proportional to the time delay from collapse to defibrillation. Historically, defibrillation has only been performed by physicians and in‐hospital. With the development of automated...