• Jerishma Patel, Faraan O Rahim, Sreekanth Yellanki, Hanul Choi, Denise Simmons, Patrick Pun, Konstantin A Krychtiuk, Christopher B Granger, R Darrell Nelson, Lisa Monk, Peter Harrell, Daniel Mark, and Monique A Starks.
• Duke University School of Medicine, 40 Duke Medicine Circle, 124 Davison Building, Durham, NC 27710, United States of America; Stanford University Medical Center, 300 Pasteur Dr, Lane L154, Stanford, CA 94305, United States of America. Electronic address: jerishma@stanford.edu.
• Am J Emerg Med. 2024 Nov 1; 85: 166171166-171.

BackgroundLimited data are available on locations of public access defibrillation programs across communities in the United States, despite their widespread presence. Our goal was to determine publicly available AED locations of large businesses in a mixed urban-rural county. We then compared our survey results to a NC state-mandated AED registry and the county's emergency medical dispatch center AED registry.MethodsWe conducted structured phone surveys of all large businesses (>19 employees) and select small businesses (healthcare, government, childcare, educational, and religious organizations with 1-19 employees) in Forsyth County, NC (n = 1702) to determine AED ownership and location. In addition, AED lists were elicited from multi-building organizations (e.g., health systems, universities, and local government), the NC Office of Emergency Medical Services (OEMS), and the Forsyth County emergency medical dispatch center.ResultsOur survey yielded a response rate of 79.1 % and identified 411 businesses with ≥ 1 AEDs. An additional 162 AED locations were contained in AED lists from multi-building organizations and registries. In total, our canvas identified 963 AEDs at 573 unique locations. The majority of AEDs (65.1 % [627/963]) were not previously registered in the NC OEMS AED registry. Few identified AEDs (11.8 % [114/963]) were listed in the county emergency medical dispatch center registry.Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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