"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
Every Minute Counts: There is a debate going on in pubic health about public access to automatic defibrillators to improve cardiac arrest survival. The devices are simple to use once the proper training is received, but they’re expensive. A recent study in the BMJ argued that it wasn’t cost effective to have them in every public place, but it was based only on statistical supposition rather than direct observation. In most cardiac arrests the heart goes into a chaotic electrical disturbance called ventricular fibrillation. The best corrective to this is a quick electrical jolt to the heart - the quicker the better. But most heart attacks occur in the home, not in public places, so them in homes may save more lives than having them in malls, which is a question that will soon be looked into:
Next month, researchers in an $18 million study in the United States, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia will start distributing defibrillators to 3,500 heart patients and train their partners to use them. Their survival rates will be compared with those of 3,500 other heart patients whose partners receive only CPR training. posted by Sydney on
9/24/2002 06:33:00 AM
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