I had a conversation with the CEO of a company who sells Automated external defibrillators or AEDs. Ideally anybody should have access to an AED within 6 minutes after the need arrises to have an AED. Because if a cardiac arrest is left untreated the survival rate is only 5 to 20%. But if a cardiac arrest is treated within 6 minutes the survival rate is quite high, however, the average ambulance response time is 8-12 minutes and for each minute defibrillation is delayed, the odds of survival are reduced by approximately 10% .So that begs the question, if everybody in Europe needs to have access to an AED within 6 minutes how many does one need?
Anybody should have access to an AED within 6 minutes anywhere in Europe.
Let’s just say that the whole of Europe is one large empty parking lot and ignore high buildings with many floors, agricultural areas and everything else that has something to do with the real world.
- According to Wikipedia Europe’s land area is 10.180.000 km2
- The average walking speed of a person is approximately 5 km per hour
That means that an average person has a walking radius of 500 meters within 6 minutes and assuming we can share available AED’s per area that means that you need 2 AED’s per 10.000 m2 or a total of 10.180.000 AEDs But that’s only the case if you bring the patient to the AED. That mean if you have to walk from the patient to the AED and then back again that number doubles. A total of 20.360.000 AED’s
Now just hope that you are the only person in your 500 meters range who needs an AED.
