There was a lot of news coverage last week about the AED recall announced November, 2009.
NBC ran a catchy story entitled, “Fatal Flaw,” and other coverage poured in from CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and several other media sources. Our AEDs manufactured between August, 2003 and August, 2009 have components that can fail on rare occasions and twice in the last six years this resulted in failure during a rescue attempt. We take every failure very seriously and though it only happened twice, we decided to initiate a voluntary recall.
While coverage of these rare failures hit the airwaves, the overwhelming majority of our AEDs continued to work their miracles.
In fact, Cardiac Science AEDs were responsible for two saved lives last week alone:
Zach Nicolas, the publicly accessible defibrillation coordinator for the City of Miami told us we had a save April 29 in downtown Miami at a corporate-run event. The victim happened to be the Assistant City Manager who collapsed with sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and was shocked by a City of Miami Police Officer attending the event with our Powerheart AED G3 Plus Automatic, which converted him after one shock at 178 joules. Thanks goes out to Certified AED Specialist Rob Williams and Regional Manager Mike Castleman for placing that unit before it was needed.
AED Specialist Troy Pflugner wrote in to tell me he had a save in his area too. Indiana Live Casino‘s Matt Whalbring told Troy: “We had another cardiac arrest last night using your AED that you sold us. I’m glad to say it was a save. The person was breathing and talking when the medics took them.”
Matt continued, “Cardiac arrests are always cause for different emotions. This time in particular it was even more so because the patient that went into arrest was one of our own. I am happy to say that after only one shock the patient opened his eyes. By the time the paramedics showed up he was talking. It was one of the most amazing things that I have heard. We can’t wait to have him back!”
Last 5 posts
- Cardiac Science AEDs in Spain [VIDEO] - April 4th, 2011
- Cardiac Science wins first major public access defibrillation program in Europe - March 30th, 2011
- Georgia Park saves 5 lives with AEDs - March 24th, 2011
- Sad stories, avoidable deaths? - March 23rd, 2011
- Texas school's AED saves 6-year-old's life - March 22nd, 2011
May 5th, 2010 at 8:59 am
Make that three saves. I just got this email from a member of our Customer Care team:
“Pass on the following information to whom ever would be interested.
During a life-guarding re-certification class this past Sunday we had a gentleman in the pool experience a heart attack.
During the course of CPR we had to use the AED. Without it we would have lost him and the experience put a better perspective on the need to have such a device in our facility. Thank you for your great customer service and affordable pricing.”
Amber Hollis-Fesmire
Oklahoma Panhandle State University