Results of the introduction of an automated external defibrillation programme for non-medical personnel in Galicia.

Objectives: To describe the plan and development of a programme for the introduction of automated external defibrillation for non medical personnel and to report the results of the first 10 months of activity in a community which is predominently rural, such as Galicia.
Methods: The plan for introduction of the project included aspects of logistics, training and control. We studied cardiac arrests, that were treated in basic life support ambulances (BLS-A) equipped with automated external defibrillators (AEDs), from 1st March to 31st December 2001.
Results: Our community benefits from pioneering legislation in Spain. During the 10 months of study, 28 AEDs were in service, mostly in urban areas. In all cases, a thorough control of the quality of the service in which AEDs was used was carried out. 12% of the patients, who were victims of sudden cardiac death (SCD) and were found in ventricular fibrillation (VF), survived and were discharged from hospital. However, the percentage of patients found in VF is only around 26%. This is due to long assistance intervals (from the call to the arrival on site), and an important delay from the moment when circulatory collapse takes place until the emergency service 061 is called, more than 5 min in half the cases.
Conclusions: The programme followed for the introduction of AEDs in Galicia was adapted to the socio-demographic characteristics of the population. The prehospital emergency assistance model was developed, executed and controlled by the Public Emergency Health Foundation of Galicia 061 (PEHF-061). The overall results of our first 10 months experience with the automated external defibrillation programme were as to be expected. In general, they are comparable to other published reports; however, ways of shortening the times from the point of collapse to defibrillation must be found, mainly by training the population and through the extension of automated external defibrillation provision to other first responders.