An Open Letter to our Customers and Partners:
Powerheart AEDs fully comply with current AHA/ERC Guidelines and training programs

Recently the American Heart Association (AHA) moved to increase the frequency of bystander CPR. Their goal: “to create a ‘call to action’ for bystanders as they care for an adult who has experienced a witnessed, out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.”

In the event of a witnessed adult collapse, bystanders are now encouraged to provide Hands-Only CPR (CPR compressions without rescue breaths) if they are uncomfortable with providing traditional CPR. (The AHA does not recommend Hands-Only CPR for infants and children, for adults whose cardiac arrest is from respiratory causes, or for an unwitnessed cardiac arrest.) For more information on this, please visit www.americanheart.org/handsonlycpr.

The AHA will continue to teach traditional CPR including rescue breaths in their training, and recommends that rescuers perform CPR to their level of comfort and ability.

We are writing to assure you: all Powerheart® AEDs fully comply with the current AHA/ERC Guidelines and training programs. Our voice prompts instruct rescuers to provide compressions and breaths, and rescuers should follow the default instructions to their level of comfort. This is consistent with the AHA statement, “If the AED is programmed to instruct you to provide breaths but you are not confident that you can do so … [you can] use Hands-Only CPR when prompted by the AED to perform CPR.”  

We support the AHA’s continued commitment to increasing bystander CPR and their mission to improve survival rates and quality of life for victims of sudden cardiac arrest.

Cheryl Shea - VP, Regulatory & Clinical Affairs

Letter PDF