Public Use of Automated External Defibrillators

To the Editor: The results of the study by Caffrey et al. of the use of publicly available defibrillators in three Chicago airports (Oct. 17 issue) 1 are encouraging, but several issues warrant further discussion. First, although the estimated cost of $7,000 per life saved is interesting, it fails to take into account the downstream costs associated with the deployment of automated external defibrillators. Using estimates from the medical literature, we calculated a cost–utility ratio of approximately $33,000 per quality-adjusted year of life gained 2 – 4 (Table 1). This finding supports the authors' conclusions regarding the cost effectiveness of their program. Second, . . .