Engineers create revolutionary defibrillator to reduce cardiac deaths.
Teacher's Tools Campus Happenings Engineers create revolutionary defibrillator to reduce cardiac deaths. But thanks to the efforts of several determined engineers, the survival rate of cardiac victims should improve dramatically. In sudden cardiac arrest, the heart loses its electrical coordination due to a fatal arrhythmia called ventricular fibrillation. The only known cure for ventricular fibrillation is defibrillation, which is a carefully timed electrical shock to the heart that must be administered within minutes of the cardiac arrest. Because of the expense and training requirements, manual defibrillators are not widely deployed, so it is unlikely one will be handy when a victim's heart stops beating.