Discover 4 Key Differences Between Defibrillator VS Cardioversion

October 6, 2022

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A heart is what makes a human to be able to stay alive. As the blood that comes from a heart starts to pump through your whole body, it makes all the organs and muscles to be able to function properly. However, a malfunction of your organs is inevitable especially your heart.

Discover 4 Key Differences Between Defibrillator VS Cardioversion

defibrillator-vs-cardioversion

As your age begins to deteriorate, your body won’t be the same as before. You will begin to notice that you are not able to exercise or perform in heavy tasks without feeling very tired. It is worse for those who work in mundane environment (such as office) as they lack of physical activity during their working hours.

This health deterioration may cause your heart to either stop beating suddenly or having irregular heartbeat. These two situations may be reversed by using either defibrillation or cardioversion procedure. While both procedures are used to treat a life-threatening condition of the heart, there are 4 distinctive differences between those two. Let’s find out what are those…

1. They Are Used For Different Heart Problems

Those who do not know anything about heart problems and how to solve it would be confused about these two procedures. A defibrillation is the asynchronous delivery of energy, such as the shock, randomly during cardiac cycle.  It’s usually used when there is no pulse detected on the patient.

 

If the situation is dire where the victim’s heart stops beating, it could deliver an electrical shock so that the heart can restart again. If you would like to know more about what is automated external defibrillator, you can click on this link.

 

Meanwhile, a cardioversion is a delivery of energy that is synchronized to the QRS complex meant to restore a normal heart beat towards patients that suffer from arrhythmia or in simple word, irregular heartbeat.

2. Low Pulse Vs No Pulse

defibrillator-vs-cardioversion

Whenever a victim suffers from a cardiac arrest, the victim mostly will not have any pulse as their heart stops beating. In this situation, defibrillation is the proper medical procedures to be used in order to restart the victim’s heart.

Defibrillation is also use for patient with certain type of arrythmia, patient have a heartbeat but not in a normal pattern and cannot be reversed by using cardioversion technique.

On the other hand, if the patient’s heart is beating irregularly with a low pulse, then a cardioversion is the right procedure to be used so that they could restore the patient’s heartbeat back to normal.

3. Both Have Different Energy Levels For Electric Shocks

Yes, both of the medical devices treat the patient’s heart by sending electric shocks. However, both have a different energy level of electric shocks, which is why you cannot use a cardioversion on a victim that suffers from a cardiac arrest, and vice versa. Cardioverison must be done by health professionals and usually it is done while patient is sedated.

A cardioversion lets out energy levels of 100 to 300 joules only, while a defibrillation delivers 200-320, and it varies depending on the types of defibrillators that the doctor is using. Thus, defibrillation vs cardioversion delivers different energy levels of electric shocks.

4. Type of device use

defibrillator-vs-cardioversion

There are for types of defibrillator that can be used to perform defibrillation procedures: Automated External Defibrillators (AED) usually can be found in public area and can be use by public, Semi Automated AED is usually used by paramedics, Standard defib with monitor which usually used in hospital, and implanted defibrillators.

For Cardioversion procedure, it can be dome using electric machine and electrod (electric cardioversion) or by using medication (pharmacologic cardioversion)

This concludes the 4 key differences between defibrillation vs cardioversion. Both has it’s own functions and both are used to treat different cases of heart problems. Once you get to know them, it’s easier for you to know the difference.

Getting an automated external defibrillator in your own home is great because you will never know when are you going to need it. If you are looking to buy a defibrillator with great quality, you can click on this link or Whatsapp us for more details.

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