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Comment by pipes | Hacker News Reader

What are AEDs? Aspirin? Blood thinners? I'm from the UK, so probably a naming difference!

AED - Automated External Defibrillator. They're portable device defibrillator which can deliver an electric shock. As I understand it, it detects an abnormal heart rhythm and shocks the rhythm back to normal. Note that there are some situations where they will not work. (For example, Pulseless Electrical Activity or PEA is "non-shockable.")

Correct. The shockable rhythms are ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia (racing heart). Fortunately these rhythms occur in many heart attacks.

Unfortunately PEA and asystole (flatline) do too, and shocking won't fix those -- despite what movies and TV would often have you believe.

Precisely. Well, when you're talking about AEDs - VF and VT.

Defib is more like rebooting a malfunctioning heart, versus jump starting it.

Paramedics with a manual defibrillator can do other things with other rhythms, but AEDs are limited to those.

> despite what movies and TV would often have you believe.

Yeah, I found out the hard way, suffering PEA. AEDs are great; but, people should still learn CPR.

Thanks :)

AED: Automatic External Defibrillator, a defibrillator that doesn't need a trained operator

Aspirin: a blood thinner and painkiller

Blood thinners: given to people at risk of a heart attack to thin the blood and reduce the chance of blood flow being obstructed

IIRC in the King's English:

aspirin = acetylsalicylic acid

blood thinners = anticoagulants

They are called AEDs in the UK too

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