Brilliant Idea! A Cell Phone Defibrillator - Innovation for saving lives

Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is responsible for more deaths every year than AIDS, breast cancer, lung cancer and stroke combined. Sudden cardiac arrest means that, without warning, the heart stops beating. If the heart is not defibrillated (therapeutically shocked) within a few minutes, the victim dies. Imagine how difficult it is to reach the victims of SCA in time to save their lives. In fact, 95 percent of victims die as a direct result of SCA.

But suppose we all carried our own personal defibrillators? What if defibrillators became a feature of our cell phones?

Just that brilliant idea is addressed in Benjamin Sacketkhou's international patent application entitled "Wireless Communication Device With Integrated Defibrillator," published in December 2007.

Sudden cardiac arrest is caused by an interruption in the heart's electrical system, causing the heart to stop beating, or pumping blood. If the heart is not "jump started" within a few minutes after SCA, the victim will die. Automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) can be used with minimal training by most adults to restart the victim's heart, and many public buildings and transportation systems have them, but access to them may be too late.

Although many persons, including professional athletes in their seeming "physical primes," have no advance warning before an sudden cardiac arrest, almost half of SCA victims have had episodes of cardiac arrhythmia or heat attacks. Cardiac arrhythmias can be curtailed by defibrillator implants (formerly "pacemakers"), but they are not advised for all cardiac patients.

What Mr. Sacketkhou describes in his patent application is a GPS device, such as a cell phone, with a component part of an automatic external defibrillator, that a user could

1) attach, by electrical pads, to his or her chest to detect any occuring arrhythmia.

2) Such device would automatically check for the necessity of a therapeutic shock,

3) automatically deliver the therapeutic shock to the heart,

4) and automatically notify the nearest emergency professionals as to the victim's whereabouts though the cell phone (GPS system).

If the defibrillator wires are not attached to the victim, a passerby could observe the cell phone, quickly employ the defibrillator, and set the same system into motion.

When you consider that just a few minutes is all you have to revive an SCA victim, a portable personal cell phone/defibrillator is just what the doctor ordered... and fast! Mr. Sacketkhou, please develop this invention!

via Register Hardware. Sources: "Wireless Communication Device With Integrated Defibrillator," Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.