Australia is particularly good with heart attack victims, according to the researchers. All of the 740 ambulances in New South Wales, for instance, carry defibrillators and highly trained paramedics. The standard procedure in the industry is to apply cardiopulmonary resuscitation to the passenger having a cardiac arrest and redirect the flight to the nearest airport. In virtually every case, the passenger is dead by the time the plane arrives. With defibrillators on board, Australian scientists found that some of those passengers can make it to a hospital.
Time is crucial.
Few individuals ever survive more than 10 minutes after the initial attack unless CPR is given and the heart is shocked into regular contractions. It could take 15 to 20 minutes for a plane on a takeoff runway to get back to the terminal. Qantas was an especially good airline for the test because many of its routes are over water, says O Rourke. If a person went into cardiac arrest, Qantas jets could be over the Pacific Ocean hours from the nearest airport, he adds. The AEDs are part of an extensive medical kit carried on the planes since 1991, mostly for use by doctors volunteering to assist an ailing fellow passenger.