A Heterogeneous Legal Landscape Governs Community AED Use: Crowdsourced United States AED Legal Review and Gap Analysis.

Abstract

Objectives: Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) are a tremendous advance in the care of victims of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. We sought to define and assess the legal landscape regarding Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) in the United States (U.S.).

Methods: We performed a retrospective study of all state and federal laws relevant to the use of AEDs outside the hospital in the U.S. In the first of three phases, we searched a database of U.S. laws and regulations ("rules") using broad relevant search terms. Teams of two investigators reviewed all rules identified for relevance to ten realms: location, acquisition, deployment, liability, training, accessibility, maintenance, registration, interface, and reporting. We termed the application of each rule to a single realm an "action," so each rule could have one or more actions. In Phase 2, a third reviewer resolved any differences or discrepancies. A separate team of investigators confirmed or identified a "URL" online address for each rule. In Phase 3, we performed quantitative assessments of all included rules using summary statistics and Cohen's kappa to assess reviewer reliability. We made qualitative assessments for each realm across all jurisdictions using SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analyses.

Results: Nine hundred twenty-one rules, which included 1,987 actions, were deemed relevant to defibrillator access and use in the community, with a mean of 17.4 (SD 14.0) rules and 37.5 (SD 35.0) actions per jurisdiction, suggesting large heterogeneity in actions across states. There were 21 federal rules, including 42 actions. Qualitative analyses revealed that some states have successfully implemented AED training programs and public awareness campaigns, but uneven public awareness, cost, liability, and overly complex or stringent rules have posed barriers to successful AED deployment and use.

Conclusions: We have provided a focused overview of U.S. rules governing community AEDs. We found high heterogeneity across states and a limited federal floor of rules. It is hoped this report can be used to improve legislation and resulting future successful AED use.