BENEFITS OF AED

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Automatic external defibrillator, better known as AED, is instrumental in bringing back normal heartbeats for a person suffering from an acute cardiac arrest. That was the case in Seoul last month when a man in his 70s collapsed at a convenience store from a heart attack. The police officers who arrived at the scene brought an AED from a nearby subway station and saved the man's life. We have the details.

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​A man has collapsed in a convenience store. Called by a store clerk, police officers arrive at the scene shortly. While one officer checks the man's breathing and pulse before administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation, another officer brings an AED, an automatic external defibrillator. The man's body jerks up when electric shock is delivered through the pads attached to the torso. As the police officers repeatedly administered CPR and used the AED for nearly 10 minutes, emergency medical technicians arrived and transported the patient to a hospital. The officer said he brought the AED from a subway station located about a 100 meters away from the convenience store.

[Soundbite] SGT. SONG HAN-WOONG(SEOUL GWANAK POLICE STATION) : "I use Sillim Station often and remembered seeing an AED there."

It also helped greatly that the officer was already trained on how to use the machine. About 70% of the cardiac arrest victims get their normal heartbeats back when an AED is used within four minutes of the cardiac episode.

[Soundbite] "Push the button. Defibrillation is done."

[Soundbite] MIN JOO-HEE(GWANAK-GU COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER) : "It's easy to operate if you follow the machine's instructions. People hesitate because they rarely get a chance to use it, so we train them to use the AED."

In 2017 alone, roughly 29,000 people suffered acute cardiac arrests, up about 50% over the past 11 years. But CPR training and AED availability helped boost the survival rate by nearly four times from a decade ago.