Oct 15, 2026, 6:12 PMMen only please (women, please boost)
A woman you've never met before is walking past you and suddenly complains of chest pain, clutches her chest, goes down, loses consciousness. You establish she has no pulse.
Someone has fetched the AED
It has two pads that you need to position on her chest - one on her right side below the collar bone, the other on her left, just below her breast
(Please boost for coverage)
You will
@mloxton Is “Ask a female bystander to open her top and place the pads, providing supervision if necessary.” an option?
Oct 15, 2026, 6:27 PM@pmonks
Not in this poll
@mloxton 👍
@mloxton
The run away made me laugh...
for a second.
I was taught in a first aid training by the American Red Cross that running away is a valid option, especially if you risk being late for an important appointment by stopping to help. I think the point the instructor was trying to make was that if you start to provide first aid, you have to see it through and can’t change your mind along the way. However, for me as someone from a country where you can get into more legal trouble for not helping than for trying to help and then get sued, that point was very difficult to comprehend.
@mloxton You may also need to remove the bra; underwire is very dangerous with AED shock. If no pulse, her life is in *imminent* danger, puritan concerns have to be secondary.
But if others are there and can, you tell them to form a circle facing outward. And you make sure someone is calling 911 already, and you follow your training and do the job.
@mloxton And, as always, this is a good time to put out the call:
LEARN CPR AND AED
If you have already been trained, is it time to renew? The guidelines change over time.
You could save a life!
@ZenHeathen @mloxton I prefer how one of my med school classmates put it
"If it is a witnessed cardiac arrest, the person is dead. They just don't know it yet"
That classmate was also a former Canadian infantry officer, so fun coincidence
@autolycos @mloxton I prefer to think that with CPR and prompt medical attention, their chances are good.
@ZenHeathen @autolycos @mloxton
From what I read the probability of survival isn't great.
Though compared to no AED, no CPR and no medical care their chances are so much better.
Oct 16, 2026, 3:25 PMFrom Red Cross, survival rates of out of hospital cardiac arrest
~4-7% with no CPR
~10-16% CPR alone
~50-70% CPR + AED
@mloxton @ZenHeathen @autolycos@beige.party
That list makes clear the need to know the location of the nearest AED.
Which I'll do tomorrow.
@skua @mloxton @ZenHeathen there are apps which tell u where the nearest is exactly! Everyone should have one on their phones!
@squee @skua @mloxton @ZenHeathen
Yes. And I do strongly recommend to actually check on the supposed locations of those AEDs. More than once when I did, I found the AED to be either inaccessible because crap was piled up in the way, or outright missing because "we… uh, had to temporarily move it to a different place".
1/
@squee @skua @mloxton @ZenHeathen
If you encounter something like this, don't waste your time discussing shit. Call the non-critical service line of the regional emergency dispatch center report it. Also if you have a camera at hand (smartphone) take a photo of the situation (panorama mode) and send it to emergency dispatch, too.
Then lean back and enjoy, how the people responsible for endangering lifes will get ripped a few new ones.
2/2
@datenwolf @squee @mloxton @ZenHeathen
#Perth, Western Australia: after going to all the marked close-by AED locations given on the app/webpage (yes the webpage is called an app), looking at the location of AED units, the hours of accessibility, the info on the "app" about accessibility and phoning the org, I warn against using the "app".
It doesn't usually say when the unit is inaccessible.
Org says this is fine as no-one should be using that info. (But they put it out any way.)
Phone 000
@datenwolf @squee @mloxton @ZenHeathen
And the app map does not show different coloured pins for "periodically inaccessible" and "accessible 24/7" AED units. All the same colour.
One of the many problems with AI Slop is that it's adding to human-generated slop. And there is a lot of that.
Edit: An emergency service putting out potentially misleading information while feigning total confidence in the way that info will be used and that it'll not put lives at risk is sad. At least I know now.
@ZenHeathen this. @autolycos @mloxton
@NatureMC @ZenHeathen @mloxton dying is the most natural thing we do. One per each, on average.
-Me
@autolycos I don't want to meet such a cynical "me" in a moment when my life could be saved by quick action.
Approximately 90% of those suffering an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest will die. (but see the figures from @mloxton ) For each minute of delay in CPR/AED survival chances decrease by 10%. Speed is of the essence.
The AED will talk you through what to do, and it will only administer a shock if the person has a shockable rhythm.
And if you are on your own - GET HELP, there is nothing as lonely or intimidating as attempting CPR/defib on your own.
@tompearce49 @ZenHeathen @mloxton 100% have died.
However, death is reversible. For a brief window. If CPR and an AED and advanced care are all applied skillfully within that window.
Oct 17, 2026, 12:57 AMOct 16, 2026, 2:59 AM@autolycos
Well ~10% is better than nothing
Problem is many women experiencing a heart attack don't exhibit the same pain in the chest sympotom as men, often we have flu like symptoms, feel sick to our stomach or heartburn, and tired.
@TrueNorthSpice @mloxton When there's no pulse, it's very serious, you can be sure.
@ZenHeathen @mloxton
Of course.
I was responding to the "she has a pain in the chest" comment.
@TrueNorthSpice @mloxton Yeah. The signs are sometimes, though not always, different than in men, and it's good to know the difference--somethimg else that professional CPR training covers.
I figured that determination was already made in the scenario, or unimportant, because enough has already happened that a pulse has been checked.
And if there's no pulse, there's no breathing, and no consciousness. Decisions have to be made quickly and decisively. And once the AED is connected, its programming will check vitals and tell you what to do.
(Shit--I just had a nightmare flash of some idiot tech bro wanting to put AI in AEDs!😮)
ugh. Now that is indeed a nightmarish thought!!!
@ZenHeathen it's already there. How do you think they recognize a shockable rhythm?
@autolycos @TrueNorthSpice @mloxton Fibrillation vs no pulse vs normal pulse. That's *not* AI.
@ZenHeathen the AED only senses a 2 lead EKG for electrical activity. It has no capability of pulse detection @TrueNorthSpice @mloxton
@autolycos Then how is it that EKGs and AEDs have worked for decades before "AI"?
Actually, no, nevermind. I'm done with this conversation.
Oct 16, 2026, 12:34 AMAccording to this manual, it has circuitry with an algorithm and filter to detect v-fib, pulseless a-fib, and several other shockable rhythms, and locks out if it detects sinus rythm or no contact
Oct 16, 2026, 3:11 AMDo you have any idea how many decades old the field of AI is? Seven decades!
If you're using the term "AI" only to refer to the slop machines marketed by Elon Musk and his friends, you're doing their marketing for them.
@cass @ZenHeathen Monte Carlo method better for you?
@autolycos @cass @ZenHeathen Machine learning? Anyone else remember 2015?
@arclight @autolycos @cass I'm pretty sure I clearly referred to "techbros shoving AI" into everything, which is *not* a 2015 thing.
Oct 16, 2026, 6:18 PM@arclight @autolycos @ZenHeathen
Machine Learning has been around since the 1950s. Neural nets are not new. Computing power and algorithms have improved a great deal over the years, though.
When I studied AI in college, it was seen as incredibly geeky and not very lucrative. It's like people don't remember anything that happened more than 5 years ago.
@ZenHeathen @TrueNorthSpice @mloxton Ideas have already coalesced, luckily medical device certification is quite strict. Also, AEDs have used (classic deterministic) machine learning for literal decades (back when we called them "expert systems").
Oct 16, 2026, 10:13 AM@ZenHeathen @TrueNorthSpice @mloxton > somethimg else that professional CPR training covers
unfortunately, not always.
@ZenHeathen @TrueNorthSpice @mloxton a) laypeople aren't trained to reliably get a pulse and b) no pulse at all means immediate compressions, not AED.
A reasonably new AED should automatically tell you that but older/cheaper ones don't necessarily do that.
AEDs are used against ventricular fibrillation, not for a stopped heart. They artificially stop the heart by shocking so you can start pressing to keep up the blood flow.
Oct 16, 2026, 12:28 AMTrue but the poll is based on a scenario in a YouTube video, so I'm using that as stated
Oct 16, 2026, 12:26 AM@ZenHeathen
I've seen nothing in the literature of any actual injury due to underwire.
Have you seen any?
@mloxton I have no literature to consult. But it's been mentioned in every training session I've been in for almost twenty years.
Oct 16, 2026, 12:49 AM@ZenHeathen
I suspect it's one of "could happen" hazards rather than something that has ever
Hey @mcnado have you ever heard of injury due to an AED interacting with an underwire bra? Given how often AEDs are used in the wild, I'm guessing you should have seen this in the ER if it was a real thing
@mloxton @ZenHeathen no, but it would be hard to defibrillate with it in place. The pads are large, and placement is essentially right across the anterior chest. The energy is also going between the two pads through a path of least resistance, and an underwire typically doesn’t extend back around to where the other pad goes.
@mloxton @ZenHeathen Same. I trained in First Aid in a Nordic country. The training material was presented by a woman and the video materials had 75% women cast members, the health & safety team has always been woman-majority. If there were evidence a bra under wire would cause even mild injury, that information is more likely to have made it to the training here than anywhere else in the world. It wasn't there.
The symptoms of cardiac distress in women did make it to the training. ♥️
@mloxton @ZenHeathen
Australian CPR training is remembered as "Maybe they'll get a burn from the underwire." " (Paraphrase) "But for that to matter they'll need to be alive. If removing their bra is beyond you then zap them with their bra on."
@ZenHeathen @mloxton My husband, who has done training, said when I mentioned this 'cut it in front in the middle'. You don't have time to mess with closures in the back and also probably not to check whether a bra has underwires.
(Do AEDs come with scissors? If not, they probably should. And a note saying 'just cut the fucking clothes already'.)
@wynke @ZenHeathen @mloxton I believe so, but have never had to use one. First aid kits do. In both cases to cut open clothing
FFS!
This is life and death. Bystander initiated AED intervention has to happen in a 10 minute window and is 80% effective. If the woman suffering wants to get embarrassed and sue me, she can do so if she survives.
@ZenHeathen @mloxton our first aid at work course said to not bother removing a bra. My understanding is it may cause some injury but there's not requirement to do so and it wastes time
@mloxton It would be interesting to filter the answers into US/non-US.
The United States is very prudish, so many men might not open a strange woman's top even to save her life; and the United States is also very litigious, so it's not unlikely that the victim would sue a helper for saving her life.
Oct 16, 2026, 12:45 AM@simon_brooke
Yes, and my motivation was a manosphere dumbass who was doing a rage-bait video about another video in which a woman describes this scenario and explains that in the US, witnessed heart attacks in women addressed with AED at half the rate of men, partially because men here are loath to use the AED on a woman.
The rage-bait guy is making this out to be fear of being sued, which he attributes to women falsely accusing men of sexual assault.
BTW suing someone for good faith CPR or AED use is vanishingly rare in the US, and is also protected under the "Good Samaritan" laws
Oct 16, 2026, 6:37 AM@mloxton @simon_brooke I think that a key aspect, as mentioned somewhere else in the thread, is that some jurisdictions go beyond good samaritan laws, adding an explicit duty to help and/or an explicit waiver of lesser laws that are necessarily broken when responding to an emergency.
In the US, I'd routinely see emergency vehicles, full lights, sirens, and horns, stuck behind cars whose drivers don't want to cross a red light to let the emergency vehicle through.
Oct 17, 2026, 4:41 PM@simon_brooke
True, but the perception or risk of being sued is wildely greater than the actual risk, and is beuping pumped to fever pitch by manosphere dumbasses making money out of rage-baiting stupid men
@mloxton not too difficult to answer when living in a country where people don't sue each other over everything (shouldn't be everywhere else either, for that matter). You help people in need and deal with any potential consequences later.