TORONTO, ON--It turns out defibrillators can’t miraculously save lives if they can’t be turned on.
A man needed life-saving help earlier this month but, although there were people on scene willing to provide it, a failed battery prevented any opportunity for a happy ending.
The good news for a man who went into cardiac arrest on the Toronto subway was that a nurse and a doctor were on the same train and a defibrillator was on the wall of the TTC station.
The man collapsed on the northbound train Nov. 8, the AED (Automated External Defibrillator) on the wall at Museum station was deployed.
The problem was they could not get it to turn on.
“It didn’t work,” said one witness.
“The battery was dead,” added a Toronto firefighter.
In other words, the AED was useless.
The nurse and doctor attempted CPR and chest compressions until Toronto Fire got to the scene and took over and applied its operational AED.
But it was too late.
The senior citizen was taken by ambulance “vital signs absent” and pronounced dead in hospital.
The big question is if the AED in Museum station had been operational, could it have helped?
“My understanding is that this was a tragedy and even Fire/EMS were unable to revive the gentleman,” said a saddened TTC spokesman Brad Ross. “Toronto Fire and EMS did attend, but the customer did die, sadly. There’s no way to determine if the AED would have made a difference. CPR and efforts by Fire and EMS with their defibs were unsuccessful.”
But why did the AED not work?
”The battery had somehow become dislodged from the unit when it was removed from the case,” Ross explained. “This has been shared with EMS to make sure people are aware of this anomaly. All units on TTC property have been checked.”
Morty Henkle, executive director of the Mikey Network which has donated 1,400 AED’s in various locations, said while this particular one was not from them, he has learned it was not as much the machine as perhaps human error.
“When it was taken out it is believed a fingernail may have dislodged the battery preventing it from being able to affect the charge,” he said. “It was a freak accident. It’s a one-in-10,000 time occurrence.”
Henkle does not believe a coroner’s inquest is necessary.
However, I think a study should be commenced to expose this potential flaw if the AEDs can be so easily stopped from doing their job.
Once every 10,000 times is one too many times for this unknown man’s family.
The bottom line, as Chris Doucette reports, they don’t really know why this battery didn’t fire.
SOURCE: Toronto Sun