Implantable Defibrillator

Excerpt

Practitioners use the terms sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and sudden cardiac death interchangeably; however, their definitions are distinct. Sudden cardiac arrest is the “sudden cessation of cardiac activity so that the victim becomes unresponsive, with no normal breathing and no signs of circulation.” If the condition is not addressed immediately, sudden cardiac arrest progresses to sudden cardiac death. Sudden cardiac death is defined “as a natural death due to cardiac causes, heralded by abrupt loss of consciousness.” Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest occurs outside of the hospital, and emergency medical services personnel most commonly attend to patients these situations. There are approximately 356,500 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests per year in the United States.