By Betty Adams
Kennebec Journal
AUGUSTA, Maine — If you have a medical emergency anywhere in the city, paramedics will get there by ambulance or firetruck within about five minutes.
In order to survive a cardiac arrest and be discharged from the hospital to home, however, treatment has to start sooner.
So the Augusta Fire Department and its medical director are pushing to get as many automated external defibrillators in the city as possible and to have lay people start cardiopulmonary resuscitation as soon as possible under the direction of emergency medical services dispatchers.
Full story: Augusta fire crews push for more defibrillators during EMS Week