Pilot gives 30 volunteers personal defibrillators to raise cardiac arrest survival rate

Thirty trained citizen responders in Haarlem will receive personal automated external defibrillators (AEDs) on loan under a new pilot project, which is intended to cut time between a cardiac arrest and the first shock, according to Rodi, a local Haarlem news site. Every minute without a shock sharply lowers a person’s chance of survival.

The effort, called Hybrid Alerting, is by the national volunteer network HatslagNu together with the ARREST research group at Amsterdam University Medical Centers. Organizers say the goal is to determine whether equipping selected volunteers with their own devices can deliver shocks faster than the current system. This often requires a responder to retrieve a publicly available AED before reaching the victim.

When someone has a sudden cardiac arrest, the heart often goes into a chaotic electrical rhythm called fibrillation. In that state the heart is no longer pumping blood. An AED delivers an electric shock that can reset the heart and allow it to start beating normally again.

The longer the heart stays in chaotic rhythm without a shock, the more the heart muscle and the brain are damaged by lack of blood flow. As a result, the chance of survival drops roughly by seven to 10 percent with every minute that passes without defibrillation or CPR. After about 10 minutes without a shock, survival becomes very unlikely for most.

“We have built a large network of volunteers and AEDs,” Aart Bosmans, a board member of HartslagNu, told Hart van Nederland. “What ultimately matters is how quickly an AED reaches someone in arrest. This project tests whether we can shorten that interval further. Every minute gained can be decisive.”

ARREST, which has studied cardiac arrests that take place outside of hospitals for more than two decades, will help evaluate results. “Our earlier work shows that a rapid shock is critical to survival,” ARREST researcher Jeroen van der Laan told Hart van Nederland.

“In practice, substantial time still elapses between the emergency call and the first shock," Van der Laan said. "That is where the largest gains may still be possible. It is logical to expect that a volunteer who already has an AED can act faster, but we want to see whether the data confirm it.”