Home defibrilator - wouldn't you think MJ might could have had one - they cost about $1300

Seriously. He could have afforded to have one in every room and in every car.

Something to think about.

people just die and there is nothing anyone can do..

I don't think the cardiac arrest is going to turn out to be from 'natural' causes. If he was overdosed with demerol, nothing would have brought him back.

That's what they use on TV when they shout Code Blue! and they rush in with the paddles.

Anyway, 12-1300 is not a crazy cost for many people who have chronic heart problems, yet I bet not too many have these things in their homes or business and I think perhaps they should think about it.

True, most people in hospitals are already pretty sick, but then this involves experienced teams.

http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/code-blue-survival-in-hospitals-best-on-weekdays.aspx?googleid=29722

While early defibrillation is the best predictor of survival, if someone had found him unresponsive and summoned the doc, chances are there was nothing to be done beyond a cosmetic attempt at CPR for legal reasons. Rumors are out there that he was cold, pupils dilated, and starting to stiffen up, meaning DRT.*

Second, not everything you see on the defib screen is shockable. I don't care what you see on "ER," shocking a flatline doesn't do a damned thing at all. Once in a blue moon, oxygen and drugs will bring a flatlined patient back, but it's extremely rare.



*dead right there, alternative to DOA.

I think we're going to find out he had enough drugs in him to drop a Sumo wrestler. Oftentimes we simply cannot undo that which people are determined to do to themselves. Not even Billy Mays Sham-wow defibrillator as seen on "Scrubs" will bring them back.

....and all of the security people and staff emergency response team members are trained to use them. Still, there are only so many cases in which it will make a difference.

Of course, defibrillation is the key treatment in cardiac arrest.

David

He's got the answer to a lot of these questions.

Resuscitation without it is pretty pointless. Even if you do get the heart started again. The Demerol is just going to use his Medulla Oblongata to tell his heart, I'm not done with you. Stop right there.

The demerol probably wasn't what caused the cardiac arrhythmia directly. It likely caused it indirectly by causing respiratory failure or arrest. The resulting hypoxia would have been the likely cause of the lethal cardiac arrhythmia. If that's what the Dr. gave him. If it was the Dr. should have had Narcan on hand. Of course it's all speculation till we get the tox report and the autopsy results.

David

and also he wasn't in a group that would warrant one.

Usually mind you.

and it seemed to be pretty user friendly. Attach electrodes, hit with paddles and Bob's your uncle!

train as you treat, treat as you train.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/business/02heart.html

April 2, 2008
Study Finds Home Defibrillator Is No Help
By BARNABY J. FEDER


Consumers are unlikely to benefit from buying household versions of emergency equipment meant to revive victims of sudden heart seizures, according to long-awaited results from a clinical trial announced Tuesday.

The equipment — automated external defibrillators — has been marketed to health-conscious consumers for its ability to provide life-saving jolts of electricity to people whose hearts have stopped beating, or are beating so chaotically and rapidly that they could die within minutes.

In reporting their findings at a major cardiology meeting in Chicago and online in The New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers who conducted the trial noted that the devices clearly save lives in hospitals, emergency vehicles and in busy public settings like airports and casinos where trained employees are on duty.

But the study, which included more than 7,000 patients at risk of having the seizures because of previous heart attacks, found that patients in homes equipped with the gear died at the same rate as those without it.

The seizures, known as sudden cardiac arrest, strike about 125,000 Americans each year in their homes and 40,000 in public settings outside of hospitals. Unlike a heart attack, which involves a restriction of blood flow to the heart’s muscle and is often not fatal, sudden cardiac arrest is a quick killer. Some studies have shown the survival rate from such seizures in the home to be as low as 2 percent.

more...

in the body of it it states 4 of 14 were helped but the small number made the study meaningless. 4 out of 14 being heled is 28% and I'm sure they were happy to be helped.

What a crappy story!

Thursday afternoon (for the London concert) and that Michael had died earlier (perhaps in his sleep?)and 911 was called after he had been dead a considerable amount of time.

A coroner would be able to tell within minutes how long he'd been dead within a narrow window of time just by taking his liver temperature.

Wasn't that doctor who followed him around everywhere a cardiologist?

If that's so, doesn't that indicate that he knew he may have heart problems?

If that is so, that's a good point--why not have a defibrilator on hand if you
had a cardiologist at your side every minute?

Interesting.

If MJ had a cardiologist on his team, sure is strange that he didn't have a defibrillator close by. Particularly because he was getting injections of narcotics daily. You'd think his cardiologist would have had that in his tool box.

...and he said that he read that Jackson's annual prescription drug bill was more than $100,000.

Hubby said that when this all comes out, it's going to blow everyone away--how many drugs he was taking.

You really wonder how all of this will be handled. The same thing happened to Elvis. These people get
surrounded by those who get them what they want and take care of them, but they end up dying because no one
says "no".

I would really like to understand where Jackson's friends and family were during this $100,000-drug phase?
Did they do interventions? Did they acknowledge the extent of the problem? Was the cardiologist just simply
there to monitor his heart as he drugged himself up all of the time?

Quincy Jones said earlier today that Jackson always had framed, formal pictures of blonde-haired-blue-eyed
children all over. It sounded like a very obvious, bizarre quirk. Jones said that Michael never shared with
him why he had these pictures up, but he suspected that Jackson was "a victim".

I'm just wondering why a life-long friend and manager doesn't have the balls to ask an obvious question like that?

Did anyone close to Michael Jackson ever talk to him about anything meaningful?

just a couple of specific types of cardiac arrhythmias.