Publications by authors named "M J Starks"

Article Synopsis
  • A study was conducted to find out where Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) are located in Forsyth County, NC, focusing on large businesses and some small organizations.
  • Researchers carried out phone surveys with a 79.1% response rate, discovering that 411 businesses had AEDs and identifying a total of 963 AEDs across 573 locations.
  • Most AEDs (65.1%) were not listed in the state registry, and only a small fraction (11.8%) were included in the county’s emergency medical dispatch center registry.
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Background: Defibrillation in the critical first minutes of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) can significantly improve survival. However, timely access to automated external defibrillators (AEDs) remains a barrier.

Objectives: The authors estimated the impact of a statewide program for drone-delivered AEDs in North Carolina integrated into emergency medical service and first responder (FR) response for OHCA.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study investigates the impact of bystander CPR on survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, analyzing data from over 623,000 cases between 2013 and 2022 in the US.
  • It finds that bystander CPR significantly improves survival chances across different racial and ethnic groups, but the effect is strongest in White and Native American individuals, and weakest in Black individuals.
  • Additionally, the positive association of bystander CPR with survival rates is higher in men compared to women, indicating a potential disparity in outcomes based on sex and race/ethnicity.
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Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) occurs in nearly 350,000 people each year in the United States (US). Despite advances in pre and in-hospital care, OHCA survival remains low and is highly variable across systems and regions. The critical barrier to improving cardiac arrest outcomes is not a lack of knowledge about effective interventions, but rather the widespread lack of systems of care to deliver interventions known to be successful.

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Article Synopsis
  • Drone-delivered automated external defibrillators (AEDs) show potential for improving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest response times and CPR quality, with research conducted through timed simulations involving CPR and AED delivery.
  • The study involved 51 participants and found that the median time from a 9-1-1 call to starting CPR was 1 minute and 19 seconds, while retrieving and using the drone-delivered AED took just under 2 minutes.
  • Results indicated that younger participants and those with previous AED experience performed AED tasks faster, but recent CPR training did not significantly influence the quality of CPR or the AED delivery time.
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