Design and development of an external cardiac defibrillator

Abstract

Defibrillator is used for the treatment of fibrillation (an arrhythmia of heart). The technology of defibrillation was invented more than a century ago and it’s more than half a century since it’s been used on human being. Almost all the industries and public places of the developed countries keep Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs). This technology has advanced to such a stage that wearable and implantable defibrillators are used at a frequent rate by the patient of the developed countries. But like many other inventions of science this invention also failed to reach all the people around the world. In the third world countries yet there are hospitals where there is not a single external defibrillator which could have saved a lot of lives. Coronary Heart Disease Deaths in Bangladesh is 163,769 or 17.11% of total deaths (WHO, April 2011). This death rate ranks Bangladesh 25 in the world. Price of defibrillators imported to Bangladesh varies from 3 lakhs to 15 lakhs or more. So most often government hospitals and private clinics cannot afford to keep sufficient defibrillators. Again once these devices start malfunctioning they cannot be repaired locally. Sometimes device warranty also doesn’t work out. People of the remote areas, attacked by fibrillation die long before reaching the town hospitals. Every minute passes, the chance of a patient attacked by fibrillation coming back to life decreases. A defibrillator at the union health complex could have changed the picture. As a populated place & an international university IUT Medical Center must have at least one defibrillator also as anyone at any time might be attacked by fibrillation. All these things motivated us to go for a locally made defibrillator which would be cheap but efficient, easy to handle & easy to repair. We have a hope to launch it commercially without any profit. Thus this technology will reach the people of all classes and save the lives of a lot of people. The defibrillator circuit was built using locally available equipment. Several circuits were made proceeding from the simpler to the complex one. For high voltage generation CRT TV Flyback Transformer has been used which is available at the market within 300tk only. The main cost of the device is the capacitor. The cost of the defibrillator is about 1, 20,00tk only, which will be affordable to the poor people also.