Reply

Abstract

Authors Reply: I appreciate the thoughtful comments of McGuire-Wolfe. Excellent public-access automated external defibrillator (AED) programs exist all over the world, and it sounds as if there is such a program in Pasco County. We did not mean to imply that the money to fund such programs comes from the traditional healthcare sources; however, the money must come from somewhere. Local communities often choose to fund public-health projects, and AED programs are an example of that. If cost-effectiveness is a factor in funding, then communities need to know if their money provides greater returns in an AED program as compared with programs such as hypertension awareness or drug-prevention education in teens. Unfortunately for AED therapy, all of the available cost-effectiveness data comes from models that make a lot of assumptions and could be grossly inaccurate. It sounds as if Pasco County would be an ideal location to track all of the actual costs of a public-access AED program, including the cost of the AEDs and their ongoing maintenance, training of personnel, and all of the administrative costs. Such real-world data of actual costs and number of lives saved would be very important to determine the cost-effectiveness of public-access defibrillation.