• Saeed Babaeizadeh, Reza Firoozabadi, Chengzong Han, and Eric D Helfenbein.
• Advanced Algorithm Research Center, Philips Healthcare, Andover, MA. Electronic address: saeed.babaeizadeh@philips.com.
• J Electrocardiol. 2014 Nov 1;47(6):798-803.

AbstractDefibrillation is often required to terminate a ventricular fibrillation or fast ventricular tachycardia rhythm and resume a perfusing rhythm in sudden cardiac arrest patients. Automated external defibrillators rely on automatic ECG analysis algorithms to detect the presence of shockable rhythms before advising the rescuer to deliver a shock. For a reliable rhythm analysis, chest compression must be interrupted to prevent corruption of the ECG waveform due to the artifact induced by the mechanical activity of compressions. However, these hands-off intervals adversely affect the success of treatment. To minimize the hands-off intervals and increase the chance of successful resuscitation, we developed a method which asks for interrupting the compressions only if the underlying ECG rhythm cannot be accurately determined during chest compressions. Using this method only a small percentage of cases need compressions interruption, hence a significant reduction in hands-off time is achieved. Our algorithm comprises a novel filtering technique for the ECG and thoracic impedance waveforms, and an innovative method to combine analysis from both filtered and unfiltered data. Requiring compression interruption for only 14% of cases, our algorithm achieved a sensitivity of 92% and specificity of 99%.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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