you can google the waveforms, they’re not sophisticated. improvising is unlikely to work/dangerous because of a) the need for the power to hit the correct voltage range across the heart (modern aeds measure the impedance through the chest to help with this), b) the danger to bystanders, and c) the need to know whether the heart is actually in a shockable rhythm (vfib or pulseless vtach). cardiac pacing is also a thing, but (cont.)
almost exclusively for bradycardias (rhythms that are too slow) and not applicable to most emergencies. implanted devices indeed use much lower voltages than external ones; some are defibrillators or cardioverters (like defibrillators, but designed to shock at a particular point in the cardiac cycle to correct a wider range of less severe arrhythmias) instead of or in addition to pacemakers. t. biomedical engineer
Bold of you to assume I know enough about pacing to tell the difference
Shitposting aside, thank you for the clarification. A question:
all it does is mass-depolarize the myocardium
Wait, so we do know defib’s method of action? My teacher (and wikipedia) both tell me we don’t, and I didn’t care because I don’t need to know how it works to know how to use the AED
