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I’d heard about waveform analysis of ventricular fibrillation before, but it wasn’t until I happened to read this article that I actually realized there are approved defibrillators out there that will do so.  (For a demo of the first one I found, a Phillips model, click here; that machine is actually undergoing a trial.)  In other words, some types of V-fib are more responsive to a shock than others, and a machine can be programmed to tell the difference.

Granted, this is useful only on the first shock in the patient with an unknown down time.  Witnessed V-fib, or second and subsequent shocks, could still be shocked manually, so manual defibrillation won’t go away any time soon.  However, this is an example of a bit of technology that could help customize resuscitations for each patient, instead of treating all cardiac arrests in a manner so formulaic.