Epidemiological and electrocardiographic characteristics of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims with recurrent ventricular fibrillation: Observational study

Purpose: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) victims who were shocked repeatedly by a semi-automatic defibrillator (AED) have been relatively poorly studied. Since the 2005 international guidelines on cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), several studies have shown the deleterious effect of ventricular fibrillation (VF) time length on patient survival. This study aimed to describe patients who were shocked multiple times by AED used by professional rescuers (PR), regarding the epidemiological and electrocardiographic aspects.