The number of life-saving defibrillators registered in Waverley and East Hampshire has more than doubled in just three years.

The latest annual Cardiac Coverage Report by defibshop found there were 15.22 defibrillators for every 10,000 residents in Waverley, marking an improvement of 156.88 per cent since 2021/22.

And the increase is even greater in East Hampshire, where there are now 14.53 defibrillators per 10,000 people, an increase of 168.57 per cent.

This outstrips the 149 per cent increase seen across the South East and the 43 per cent increase nationally.

The use of a defibrillator on cardiac arrest patients prior to the arrival of ambulance crews is vital in improving cardiac arrest survival rates, a report published by South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) in March shows.

The report, which looked at out-of-hospital cardiac arrests between April 2022 and March 2023, revealed if a defibrillator was used prior to the arrival of an ambulance, the average time to shock a patient was more than four minutes quicker than when the first shock was delivered by ambulance teams.

Remarkably, of those patients resuscitated prior to ambulance arrival by shocks from a defibrillator, who did not rearrest, all survived at least 30 days.

In the sme period, SECAmb attended a total of 8,824 cardiac arrest patients, and 9.5 per cent of patients’ lives were saved (271 people were alive 30 days after their cardiac arrest).

While the percentage of survivors is slightly down on the 11 per cent revealed in the previous year’s report, the total is still the second highest reported in SECAmb and is 1.5 per cent higher than the national average of eight per cent for the period.

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