• LiangLi DannyLDDepartment of Emergency Medicine, University of Calgary, Canada. Electronic address: liangdanny2@gmail.com., ChanTimothy C YTCYDepartment of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada., K H Benjamin Leung, Frank Scheuermeyer, Santabhanu Chakrabarti, Linn Andelius, Jon Deakin, Matthieu Heidet, Christopher B Fordyce, Jennie Helmer, Jim Christenson, Rahaf Al Assil, and Brian Grunau.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Calgary, Canada. Electronic address: liangdanny2@gmail.com.
• Resuscitation. 2022 Mar 1; 172: 194-200.

BackgroundThe optimal locations and cost-effectiveness of placing automated external defibrillators (AEDs) for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCAs) in urban residential neighbourhoods are unclear.MethodsWe used prospectively collected data from 2016 to 2018 from the British Columbia OHCA Registry to examine the utilization and cost-effectiveness of hypothetical AED deployment in municipalities with a population of over 100 000. We geo-plotted OHCA events using seven hypothetical deployment models where AEDs were placed at the exteriors of public schools and community centers and fetched by bystanders. We calculated the "radius of effectiveness" around each AED within which it could be retrieved and applied to an individual prior to EMS arrival, comparing automobile and pedestrian-based retrieval modes. For each deployment model, we estimated the number of OHCAs within the "radius of effectiveness".ResultsWe included 4017 OHCAs from ten urban municipalities. The estimated radius of effectiveness around each AED was 625 m for automobile and 240 m for pedestrian retrieval. With AEDs placed outside each school and community center, 2567 (64%) and 605 (15%) of OHCAs fell within the radii of effectiveness for automobile and pedestrian retrieval, respectively. For each AED, there was an average of 1.20-2.66 and 0.25-0.61 in-range OHCAs per year for automobile retrieval and pedestrian retrieval, respectively, depending on the deployment model. All of our proposed surpassed the cost-effectiveness threshold of 0.125 OHCA/AED/year provided > 5.3-11.6% in-range AEDs were brought-to-scene.ConclusionsThe systematic deployment of AEDs at schools and community centers in urban neighbourhoods may result in increased application and be a cost-effective public health intervention.Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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