Paramedics may not all be using the best method for defibrillation, study hints

Contrary to popular belief, placing defibrillator pads on the front and back of the body rather than on the front and side may boost the chances of restoring a person's heartbeat, a new study hints.

The research looked at cases in which defibrillator pads were used following an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. It suggests that back-and-front placement more than doubles the chance of success, compared to front-only placement.

The new study assessed the iNFLuence of pad placement on the survival outcomes of more than 250 patients with cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrests occur when the heart suddenly stops beating because of an electrical malfunction. (That's opposed to a heart attack, or myocardial infarction, which is caused by impaired blood circulation to the heart.)

"The key is, you want energy that goes from one pad to the other through the heart," Dr. Mohamud Daya, study co-author and a professor of emergency medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University, said in a statement. While the research provides early hints that pad placement makes a difference, it has limitations and thus bears confirmation in more extensive studies.

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Each year in the U.S., more than 350,000 people experience cardiac arrest outside of a hospital, and less than 10% of them survive.

Two of the most treatable causes of cardiac arrest are ventricular fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat) and pulseless ventricular tachycardia (when the heart beats too fast to adequately pump blood around the body). In these cases, defibrillation, which delivers an electrical current to the heart via two pads that are placed on the body, can restore a normal heartbeat and increase survival rates — if it's performed quickly enough.