Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has made an effort to improve safety for the 76 million passengers who travel through the airport yearly by making defibrillators available in virtually all corners of the facility.

The airport contains 176 Life Pak CR Plus automatic external defibrillators, or AEDs, the portable devices used to restart a person’s heart.

“Installing the defibrillators is an effort to ensure that people are safe in the airport,” said airport spokesman Herschel Grangent. “We’re responsible for our visitors’ safety. This is added insurance,” he said.

AEDs are small, portable devices designed to enable a user to shock a person who is suffering from cardiac arrest. The devices, provided by Medtronic Emergency Response System, a company that specializes in defibrillator technology, are available on walls directly under AED signs all over the airport.

The machines can be found in baggage claim, concourses A-E, security checkpoint areas and several other places. The devices are fairly easy to use. First a button has to be pressed to turn the defibrillator on. Then users pull a handle to retrieve the electrode pads. Visual displays and/or an audible voice will instruct the user where to place the electrode pads.

The pads analyze the victim’s heart rhythm to determine if shock is needed by using a built-in computer program. If and when instructed, the user then presses a flashing button to administer the shock.

Geri Jackson, of Morrow, believes the devices can provide critical treatment when time is of the essence.

“I think that this is a very good idea,” said Jackson, whose mother died recently of a heart attack. “You never know when something is going to happen,” she said.

The defibrillators available at the airport are also connected to the airport’s 911 call center.

“When you open the case, an alarm sounds alerting the call center,” said Grangent. The airport’s emergency personnel will arrive at the scene within five minutes, he said.

From April 2003 to May 2006, there were 27 cardiac arrest incidents at the airport, Medtronics reports. In more 92 percent of those cases, a bystander used the device on the victim, Medtronics says, and 13 of those patients survived.

The AEDs in the airport are powered by Lithium Sulfur Chloride batteries. The batteries and electrode pads are replaced after each use. If the AED is never used, its battery is expected to last for two years.

“With the heaviest passenger volume of any airport in the world, it only makes sense that we lead the way in making these potentially life-saving medical devices available to airport passengers,” airport General Manager Ben DeCosta said in a statement on the machines.

According to the American Heart Association, sudden cardiac arrest effects nearly 250,000 people each year in the United States. Hartsfield-Jackson started the largest AED effort among U.S. airports in 2003, called Operation HartBeat (OHB).

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