DEFIBRILLATORS NOW COMMONPLACE.

Byline: Staff and Wire Reports

BOSTON - Even ordinary people with no special training can save lives with the heart-jolting defibrillators that are being put in public places around the country, a first-ots-kind airport study found.

Many heart specialists and others want to install these simplified, automated devices in airports, shopping malls, casinos, stadiums, schools and even homes to save victims of sudden cardiac arrest.

Though several studies have examined the effectiveness of automated defibrillators in the hands of trained and designated staff members at casinos and other public places, this study in Chicago is the first to evaluate their use by untrained passers-by in real medical crises.

``I think there's enough evidence that these devices should be in every public place, and ultimately they ought to be in every home,'' said Dr. W. Douglas Weaver of the Henry Ford Heart Institute in Detroit.

The study, sponsored by the city of Chicago, was published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Sudden cardiac arrest - from heart attacks, heart disease, accidents or other causes - strikes about 250,000 American adults every year outside hospitals. About 95 percent die before reaching the hospital.

People stand a much better chance of surviving if they undergo defibrillation, which restores a normal beat to a helplessly quivering heart, within the first few minutes of cardiac arrest. Ambulances often fail to arrive with their rescue equipment within 10 minutes.

Small, easy-to-operate defibrillators that automatically detect the heart's rhythm and decide whether it needs a shock have been developed over the past 20 years.

The Chicago study's four-pound defibrillators were distributed like fire extinguishers in labeled glass cabinets at O'Hare, Midway and Meigs Field airports. About the size of a toaster, they carried both written and recorded instructions.

During the two-year study, someone tried to use one in each of 18 witnessed cases of fibrillating cardiac arrest. Eleven people were revived.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has purchased defibrillators for all 49 high schools and plans to distribute them, possibly, as soon as next week, said Pete Anderson, director of the office of emergency services for LAUSD.

School nurses, who have been trained by the American Heart Association in the use of the $3,000 medical devices, will train athletic directors, coaches and selected administrators at each site, Anderson said. About two-thirds of the schools have completed the training.

Anderson said the district's goal is to make the devices available during large public gatherings at the campuses, including graduations, plays and football games.