\u201cWe have an objective as EMS [emergency medical service] organisations and EMS physicians to help cardiac arrest patients get defibrillated as early as possible,\u201d said Matthieu Heidet, a professor of emergency medicine at Henri-Mondor university hospital in Cr\u00e9teil, France<\/a>.<\/p>\n Work by Heidet and colleagues has suggested drones could be used to increase access to the life-saving devices.<\/p>\n To explore the issue, the team analysed the number and location of 28,349 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests that occurred between 2011 and 2024 in administrative areas within the Greater Paris area. Central Paris was excluded from the analysis.<\/p>\n The team cross-referenced these events with the location of fixed automated external defibrillators (AEDs).<\/p>\n The researchers found accessibility of the 1,893 AEDs varied considerably across the area.<\/p>\n \u201cOnly 30% of all [out-of-hospital cardiac arrest] cases occurred within the target 500-metre network distance of the nearest recorded fixed AED,\u201d said Dr Hillary Minka, an emergency physician at the Lariboisi\u00e8re hospital in Paris and the first author of the work.<\/p>\n The team found an extra 910 fixed AEDs would be needed for 84.5% of the recorded cardiac arrest cases to have been within 500 metres of an AED, while 1,712 extra fixed AEDs would be needed for 100% coverage.<\/p>\n However, by using drones operating within a radius of 3,900 metres, coverage could be increased with fewer devices.<\/p>\n \u201cAs drone bases were introduced, the number of additional fixed AEDs required fell substantially,\u201d said Minka, noting that with 100 drone bases and 26 additional fixed AEDs, more than 97% of the cardiac arrest cases would have been located either within 500 metres of a fixed AED or within approximately 4km (2.5 miles) of a drone base. The use of 200 drone bases and just four extra AEDs meant more than 99% of cases would have been covered.<\/p>\n The researchers also looked at the proportion of the cardiac arrest cases deemed close enough to an existing fixed AED that the device could be retrieved in a round trip within five minutes.<\/p>\n The results revealed only 30-40% of the cardiac arrest cases had access to current fixed AEDs within this time period using the ground transportation network.<\/p>\n Heidet added that this figure was optimistic. \u201cIn France, only 8% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients benefit from the application of a public AED before the arrival of the [emergency services],\u201d he said, noting one factor is that a large proportion of AEDs are inaccessible<\/a>, for example because they are housed in enclosed private spaces that are not open at all times.<\/p>\n
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