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Edmond Town Hall Acquires A Defibrillator

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Edmond Town Hall Acquires A Defibrillator

By Andrew Gorosko

The town has purchased an automatic external heart defibrillator (AED), a compact, bright yellow device that will be kept in Edmond Town Hall to provide immediate aid to victims of heart emergencies.

James Crouch, the chief dispatcher at the building’s emergency communications center, said Wednesday the AED will be kept in a case on the wall near the building’s main lobby where it will be easily accessible in the event it is needed to revive a person having a heart emergency.

Besides the normal flow of traffic to municipal offices, Edmond Town Hall contains a heavily used movie theater, gymnasium, and social function room.

Edmond Town Hall staff members will be trained in using the defibrillator in the coming weeks, Mr Crouch said. The town obtained the device at a reduced price through New Milford’s emergency medical service, Mr Crouch said. The AED and related equipment cost approximately $2,600.

It will take about 41/2  hours of training for town hall staff members to learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillator operation.

If the heart emergency victim lacks a heartbeat, CPR is administered. If the victim has an irregular heartbeat, the defibrillator is used to shock the erratically beating heart into a normal rhythm.

Based on the results of tests performed on the victim with the defibrillator, the defibrillator issues basic voice commands telling its operator what to do for the victim. A defibrillation usually consists of a series of shocks to the heart.

Mr Crouch hopes that every local public building eventually is equipped with a defibrillator.

The defibrillator is a small, battery-operated.

Ventricular fibrillation is a condition in which the heart’s electrical impulses suddenly become chaotic, often without warning, causing the heart to stop abruptly. Victims collapse and quickly lose consciousness. Death usually follows unless responders restore a normal heart rhythm within five to seven minutes, according to the American Heart Association.

Each minute of delay in returning the heart to its normal rhythm decreases the chances of survival by 10 percent.

After as little as 10 minutes, very few resuscitation attempts are successful.

More than 95 percent of Americans who suffer sudden cardiac arrest die before reaching the hospital, representing 250,000 deaths annually.

Besides Edmond Town Hall, a major local manufacturer has defibrillators in place.

Kendro Laboratory Products, a Pecks Lane centrifuge manufacturer, which employs 400 people, has several defibrillators on hand.

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