Limited Response to Cardiac Arrest by Police Equipped with Automated External Defibrillators: Lack of Survival Benefit in Suburban and Rural Indiana—The Police as Responder Automated Defibrillation Evaluation (PARADE)

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Abstract
Objective: To assess the out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) survival advantage after providing police with automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in rural and suburban Indiana. Methods: An observational evaluation was conducted in six Indiana counties (population: 464,741) before (retrospective) and after (prospective) training and equipping police with AEDs. The primary outcome evaluated was survival to hospital discharge for all cases of ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation (VT/VF) OHCA. Other factors evaluated include age, gender, race, arrest location, witnessed arrest, bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation, response intervals, and survival to discharge for all OHCAs. Results are reported using chi‐square, Student's t‐test, and logistic regression. Results: Police were equipped with 112 AEDs, increasing total defibrillator capability by 43.2%. During the study period, AED‐equipped police responded prior to emergency medical services (EMS) in 26 of 388 cases (6.7%). The time intervals from 911 call‐to‐scene and 911 call‐to‐shock were shortened by 1.6 minutes (95% confidence interval [95% CI] = 0.0 to 3.1, p = 0.05) and 4.8 minutes (95% CI = 1.3 to 8.3, p = 0.008), respectively, with police response as compared with EMS response. Survival to hospital discharge for VT/VF OHCA was 15.0% (3/20) in cases in which police responded first and 10.0% (16/160) in cases in which EMS responded first (relative risk [RR] 0.63, 95% CI = 0.17 to 2.39, p = 0.45). Survival to hospital discharge for VT/VF OHCA did not improve from the prestudy period (16/204, 7.8%) to after police AED availability (19/180, 10.6%) (RR 0.72, 95% CI = 0.36 to 1.45, p = 0.38). Conclusions: Out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrest survival in suburban and rural Indiana did not improve after police were equipped with AEDs, likely related to poor police response.