# AED Adult/Pedi Pads



## princessretard (Oct 10, 2010)

The ambulance company i work for dont have pedi pads for the AEDs in the trucks. They have a set of adult pads and then a spare set in the AED bag but still adult sized pads. I know the medic gears have both, adult and pedi. But the BLS trucks dont get any pedi pads. When asked about this, upper management said that medics have it for their monitors and that bls just dont. They said that if emts were to have a call dealing with a pediatric patient needing resucitating measures that of course we will perform cpr and call for ALS backup. I get that. And I get that we can use the adult sized pads just place them in the appropriate place on a pedi. But still, i was wondering if other ambulance companies out there supply their BLS trucks with both adult and pedi AED pads.


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## TransportJockey (Oct 10, 2010)

My old service in ABQ had the trucks setup identically for BLS and ALS trucks, minus narcs (which the medics carried on their person). All trucks carried adult and pedi shock pads along with Zoll Ms (now E-series Zolls)


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## Bosco836 (Oct 10, 2010)

princessretard said:


> The ambulance company i work for dont have pedi pads for the AEDs in the trucks. They have a set of adult pads and then a spare set in the AED bag but still adult sized pads. I know the medic gears have both, adult and pedi. But the BLS trucks dont get any pedi pads. When asked about this, upper management said that medics have it for their monitors and that bls just dont. They said that if emts were to have a call dealing with a pediatric patient needing resucitating measures that of course we will perform cpr and call for ALS backup. I get that. And I get that we can use the adult sized pads just place them in the appropriate place on a pedi. But still, i was wondering if other ambulance companies out there supply their BLS trucks with both adult and pedi AED pads.



I volunteer with two separate services.  The one service carries the Ped's pads for their AEDs; however, the other one (a university response team) does not (given that we don't typically have ped's on campus, and on the off chance we did have a ped on campus who was in need of an AED, we would use the adult pads until County EMS showed up.)


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## MMiz (Oct 10, 2010)

I would not withhold treatment if I didn't have pediatric pads, I'd use the adult pads.  At $100 a pop, for a device that is likely never to be used and will expire, I'm sure some services would rather spend their money elsewhere.


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## JPINFV (Oct 11, 2010)

MMiz said:


> I would not withhold treatment if I didn't have pediatric pads, I'd use the adult pads.  At $100 a pop, for a device that is likely never to be used and will expire, I'm sure some services would rather spend their money elsewhere.



Basically this. Most likely your pediatric arrest patient isn't going to present in a shockable rhythm anyways.


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## Markhk (Oct 11, 2010)

JPINFV said:


> Basically this. Most likely your pediatric arrest patient isn't going to present in a shockable rhythm anyways.



While this is certainly true, the AHA National CPR registry found that up to 12% of cardiac arrests in pediatric patients were initially VF/VT and 25% of all pediatric cardiac arrests had VF/VT at some point during the resuscitation.

http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/107/25/3250



> I would not withhold treatment if I didn't have pediatric pads, I'd use the adult pads.



Just to re-emphasize this particular point, Guidelines 2005 does states, "In an emergency if an AED with a pediatric attenuating system is not available, use a standard AED." 

http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/112/24_suppl/IV-156


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