Pinellas health officials are confident lives will be saved by placing 50 portable defibrillators in busy public areas.
It's a shock in a box, a bolt of electricity designed to bring someone in cardiac arrest back from the brink at the touch of a button.
Supporters say the device is so simple that someone with no medical experience, even someone as young as 12, could operate it.
Pinellas County medical officials aim to prove just that.
In a project hailed as the most extensive of its kind in Florida, Pinellas officials hope to place 50 portable defibrillators in public buildings around the county in an effort to save more lives. The county would join just a few select communities across the nation.
At first, the devices would be placed in the hands of trained employees. But the county hopes one day to mount them on walls in office buildings, nursing homes, malls and other high-traffic areas so that passers-by could simply grab a device and set about reviving someone in cardiac arrest.
"They're designed for untrained people to use," said Chuck Kearns, director of Pinellas County's EMS and Fire Administration. "You may be the person walking through the courthouse when somebody's collapsed outside an elevator."
The county's paramedics responded to 1,291 sudden cardiac arrests last year. Only 30 percent of those people survived. But that's one of the highest survival rates in the nation. County medics say they could improve that number by at least another 10 percent if hearts in arrest received a shock faster.
To that end, they have applied for a grant from the Florida Bureau of Emergency Medical Services to help purchase the defibrillators, which cost about $2,800 apiece. The county would put up $35,000 if the state provides $105,000.
The county will find out by June 30 whether the grant has been awarded. If it has not, the county likely will buy the defibrillators itself, said Kearns.
The county has been gathering data on sudden cardiac arrests for the past three years, said Dr. Bruce Pettyjohn, county medical director. Paramedics respond most often to nursing homes and senior centers, but other facilities could benefit from the equipment.
"If we could get the public to buy into this, we know we'd save more lives," Pettyjohn said.
Someone attempting to save a life with the device is protected from liability under the state's Good Samaritan law.
Communities, office buildings, casinos and even the New York Stock Exchange have provided the devices to police officers and security guards, who often reach a medical emergency before paramedics.
University Mall in Tampa just purchased a portable defibrillator for its security team. In addition, most airlines have trained their flight attendants to use the devices while in the air.
But very few sites have made the defibrillators available to the general public.
O'Hare and Midway airports in Chicago are the exceptions. In May, O'Hare mounted 33 on its terminal walls, and Midway put up seven. Since then, trained airport employees and untrained passengers have used them on 11 patients. Nine have survived.
When a heart goes into sudden cardiac arrest, it just quivers, unable to pump blood. Often an electric shock can restore the heart's natural rhythm. Each minute the heart is denied that shock, the chance for survival drops 10 percent.
The Automated External Defibrillator works like this: Two patches are placed on the patient's chest according to a diagram in the box, and the patches are plugged into the device.
The defibrillator automatically measures the heart's rhythm. If it feels a shock is warranted, it tells the rescuer to push the shock button.
If a shock is not warranted, it advises the the rescuer to administer CPR. The device will not deliver a shock unless one is needed.
The National Institutes for Health is funding a 20-city study to compare survival rates at sites where early defibrillation is available with sites where it isn't. Pinellas County will conduct a similar study here once the defibrillators are in place, which should be by December, Kearns said.
Dr. William E. Sanders Jr., a cardiac specialist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a big fan of portable defibrillators, said he and his colleagues will be watching the Pinellas County study closely.
"We can't make an impact at all unless these things are everywhere," Sanders said. "You just don't lose people if you're fast enough. That's the whole issue: We're usually not."
