the.com/defibrillator
A device that yells 'have you tried turning it off and on again' to your heart.
means A medical device that delivers a controlled electric shock to the heart to stop dangerous chaotic rhythms and let it restart in proper sync.
from Built from 'de-' (undoing) plus 'fibrillate,' from Latin 'fibrilla,' a little fiber or thread — the diminutive of 'fibra,' fiber. Fibrillation is when heart muscle fibers twitch out of sync instead of contracting together, like a crowd of threads vibrating randomly instead of pulling as one rope. So a defibrillator, quite literally, is the machine that un-twitches the fibers — shocking the heart's muscle threads back into one coordinated pull.
- myth busted
- Cannot restart a flatlined heart, only chaotic rhythms
- first use
- 1947, applied directly to an exposed human heart
- shock timing
- Delivered between heartbeats, not during them
- public access
- AEDs talk you through it, no training required