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April 2, 2008 (Chicago) -- If you're a heart attack survivor, having a defibrillator at home won't increase your odds of survival any more than having family members and friends who know what to do in case of emergency, research shows.
The first large-scale study to look at the use of automated external defibrillators, or AEDS, in the home shows that over a three-year period about 6% of heart attack survivors with an AED in the home had died -- about the same rate as those who didn't have an AED in the home.
That's not to say that the devices didn't work: They were extremely effective when used properly, says researcher Gust Bardy, MD, of the Seattle Institute for Cardiac Research.
It's just that intensive training of spouses and caregivers in CPR and the urgency of calling 911, combined with top-notch medical treatment, appeared to work just as well, he tells WebMD.
A home defibrillator, which costs about $1,200, is not just the latest gadget for the worried, Bardy says.
"It was safe and it saved a relatively large number of people. There's no downside and it certainly could be of value," he says.
But from a public health point of view, placement of defibrillators in homes appears to be "an inefficient strategy," Bardy says.
Bardy, a self-confessed AED enthusiast who has a device in each of his two homes and each of his two cars, reported the findings here at the annual meeting of American College of Cardiology. They were simultaneously published online by The New England Journal of Medicine.
The study involved more than 7,000 people who had survived a heart attack. That places them at high risk of cardiac arrest, in which the heart suddenly stops beating, blood does not circulate, and victims fall into unconsciousness.
Each year, 166,200 Americans suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital. Paramedics, firefighters and, in some communities, police officers are trained to use defibrillators to shock a heart rhythm back to normal.
Several years ago, researchers found that training volunteers to use defibrillators distributed in shopping malls, airports, casinos, and other public places can double the chance that cardiac arrest victims will survive.
But because about three-fourths of sudden cardiac arrests occur in the home, where successful resuscitation is achieved in only about one in 50 cases, the effect of such programs is limited, Bardy says.
Enter the new study, designed to see if placing defibrillators in the homes of heart attack survivors can improve the odds.