Uno studio recentemente pubblicato sulla prestigiosa rivista scientifica New England Journal of Medicine dimostra, dati alla mano, che la defibrillazione precoce è efficace, incrementando il numero di sopravvissuti in buone condizioni neurologiche: da tener presente che in Giappone il laico (quindi non solo il medico e gli operatori sanitari: chiunque!) è legalmente autorizzato ad utilizzare il defibrillatore (ovviamente: se necessario), dal 2004 (Fire and Disaster Management Agency of Japan. Effect of first aid for cardiopulmonary arrest. Tokyo: FDMA Ambulance Service Planning Office, 2015).
The estimated number of survivors in whom survival with a favorable neurologic outcome was attributed to public-access defibrillation increased from 6 in 2005 to 201 in 2013. In Japan, increased use of public-access defibrillation by bystanders was associated with an increase in the number of survivors with a favorable neurologic outcome after out-of-hospital ventricular-fibrillation cardiac arrest.
Tetsuhisa Kitamura et al
Public-Access Defibrillation and Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest in Japan
n engl j med 375;17 October 27, 2016
Bobrow BJ et al
Chest compression-only CPR by lay rescuers and survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest
JAMA 2010;304:1447-54