Defibrillation

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Abstract
To the Editor.— The excellent review article on cardiac arrest (232:845, 1975) is an important contribution to the subject of defibrillation. We, like Dr Loeb, have observed defibrillation failures caused by technical problems and, therefore, desire to emphasize some recent information on defibrillators and defibrillation that may help to overcome many of these problems. Techniques and equipment for transthoracic ventricular defibrillation are changing, and physicians must be aware of these developments. The stimulus for these changes has been the recent finding that an important determinant of the amount of electrical energy required to defibrillate is the size of the subject1and that most defibrillators commercially available in the late 1960s and early 1970s deliver a peak current that is inadequate to defibrillate many patients who weigh over 80 kg.1,2 One way to increase defibrillation success is to use defibrillators with higher electrical output. Many of the newer models of

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