Question

Defibrillators are used to revive a person when their heart has stopped beating. How do they work? What care must the person administering the treatment take? Give other examples of medical devices based on the interaction between the human body and electrical currents.

Answer 1

It has a standard working. Defibrillators work by administering an electrical shock to the heart muscles that might jolt them into spasming and returning to their own pattern of contracting and relaxing that pumps blood through the body.  Defibrillation consists of delivering a therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the affected heart. Simply speaking, a defibrillator works by using a moderately high voltage (something like 200–1000 volts) to pass an electric current through the heart so it's shocked into working normally again.

Steps to take care of :

1) A towel should be provided along with a Defibrillator , this is to dry the patient’s chest.

2) It is important however to deliver the shock as quickly as possible. No one should touch the patient during delivery of shock

3) You should not use in Defibrillatorin an explosive environment where there is a build up of flammable vapors. One example would be a gas/petrol station.

4) Excessive chest hair can disrupt the contact of the pads with the skin and result in burns when the electrical shock is applied. A razor is supplied so you can shave excessive chest hair.

Some identical machines are :

1) ECG machine (For heart rate)

2) EEG