This is a great video. It sure gives hope to those in need of immediate medical attention! What do you think? Is this realistic and can the average person on the street use it to save a life?
Would like your opinion!
As someone who has been trained on AEDs (automatic electronic defibrillator), I think it is strange is that the woman in the video used the AED incorrectly. She has to clean off the man's chest hair so that the current doesn't arc and be ineffective - not to mention burn him. The drone would have to have a safety razor or hair trimmer attached. And then, of course, the guy who's heart just came out of arrhythmia, just sits up and rejoins the world. Very unlikely.
Beyond that, it is an interesting idea, but most buildings of any size already have AEDs installed, so it seems redundant. Moreover, not everything is a heart attack. The danger with that system is that people will likely assume that is all they need to do. As someone who has been a first responder many times, I often have to fight people off of victims because they want to do CPR even when the person is breathing and has a strong pulse. They took a CPR class and want to use the only tool in their toolkit to respond to an emergency since it is hard to "do nothing" instead of doing "something" when the adrenaline hits. In most cases, the best thing that a first responder can do is to quickly assess the victim and then monitor the victim while waiting for transport to the hospital. While waiting, you monitor pulse check pupils for dilation (evidence of stroke if one is more dilated than the other) and put the person in a recovery position if there is no concern about broken bones or spinal injury.
In theory - if they could work out all of the issues with flying the drone and managing the crowd around the victim, it could possibly do some good. But with the prevalence of AEDs in public buildings, it would probably not be so helpful in the setting that was presented. It would actually be more helpful in a neighborhood setting where most people do not have AEDs in their homes.
