[Mom MD]

Wrong. if they are doing compressions there is no circulation. There can be any number of rhythms underlying the cardiac arrest. Some the AED will shock some it won’t It will not shock asystole or PEA it will shock v tach or v fib IF it correctly detects them.

[one guy in new jersey]

If they detect no pulse, they do CPR because they think the heart has stopped.

A heart in fibrillation is a frikken clenched fist. CPR won’t crack open that tight a fist and is killing him while his brain starves for oxygen.

Get a real protocol, doc.

[lepton]

My earlier question:
So, how fast is the collapse from the heart stopping/fibrillating? Normally, I’d think the collapse is the first sign of trouble, but here we have an impact to time off of.

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My searches suggest unconsciousness ‘almost immediately’, and ‘20-30 seconds’, which are not mutually exclusive descriptions. Is the heart stopping going to cause full fainting as quickly as what we saw on its own? I’d think it would be seldom that we’d know exactly when someone’s heart stopped, and would usually get first notice from pain or the symptom of fainting.

So for the suspected cause, do we know that the collapse is as quick as what we saw?