Short CommunicationAutomated external defibrillator prevalence among the municipal police agencies of New Jersey: how regional differences affect national data
Introduction
As sudden cardiac death continues to be among the nation's leading causes of mortality,1 interventions aimed at treatment of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) have been studied extensively. Recent investigations have examined intravenous drug administration2 and institution of the advanced cardiac life support algorithm,3 but the only therapy that has been repeatedly proven effective is early defibrillation with a manual or automatic external defibrillator (AED).3 In particular, the use of AEDs by law enforcement personnel has been shown to reduce time to defibrillation by an average of 4 min4, 5 and improve absolute survival rates by up to 8.2% for patients presenting in ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation.5
According to the 2006 study conducted by Hawkins et al., the national prevalence of AEDs is 31.0% (95% CI: 27–36%).6 However, Fig. 1 may be misleading, as prevalence rates vary by geography from 10.6% in self-reported ‘urban’ areas to as high as 53.8% in self-reported ‘suburban’ locales. Since a significant source of funding for public access AEDs originates from both federal and national private grants, it is important to develop an accurate assessment of the prevalence of defibrillators throughout the United States. We hypothesized that state-specific legislation and regional cultural differences alter the real distribution of AEDs across the country. The objective of our investigation was to determine the prevalence of defibrillators among the municipal police departments in New Jersey and to compare the prevalence of AEDs in New Jersey to national estimates.
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Results
Of 566 municipalities in New Jersey, 134 were randomly selected, of which 120 (89.6%) completed the survey. Randomization was accomplished via arbitrary simple selection from a listed frame. The selected municipalities represented 15 (71.4%) of the 21 counties in New Jersey. The mean department size was 40.8 (95% CI: 27.3–54.2; Range: 5–777) officers and averaged 15.3 (95% CI: 11.2–19.4; Range: 3–220) patrol vehicles per municipality. A majority of surveys (67.5%) were answered by a sergeant or
Discussion
Our study demonstrated an exceptional rate of AED prevalence among the municipal police departments of New Jersey, to the extent that correlation of demographics that would render an agency more likely to equip their vehicles with defibrillators was unnecessary. With 95% of municipal police departments reporting AEDs in their vehicles, 78.3% of which have at least half of their departments' vehicles equipped with AEDs, such nearly-universal supply of AEDs among municipal police departments was
Conclusions
The prevalence of AEDs among the municipal police agencies in New Jersey in this investigation was 95.0% of surveyed agencies, which is significantly higher than national prevalence rates in previous studies. Our study suggests that national sampling data assessing the rate of AED deployment may not accurately account for state and regional differences in culture and legislation, thus offering a skewed perspective of the actual distribution of these lifesaving devices among police departments
Ethical approval
Requirement for Informed Consent was waived by the institutional review board.
Funding
None declared.
Competing interests
None declared.
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