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Defibrillators and cardiac arrest
How a public-access defibrillator works, the sixty seconds of CPR before it arrives, and how the emergency response and the defibrillator register are organised in 7 Nordic and Baltic countries. 33 pages, no invented device list.
CPR in sixty seconds
- Unresponsive and not breathing normally? Gasping is not breathing. Treat it as a cardiac arrest.
- Call 112 (113 in Norway). Speaker on, phone on the floor. Stay on the line — the dispatcher will coach you.
- Push hard and fast in the centre of the chest: 5–6 cm in an adult, 100–120 per minute, letting the chest come all the way back up.
- Send somebody else for a defibrillator. Do not go yourself unless it is seconds away. Keep compressing.
- Turn the device on and do what it says. It decides whether to shock. After a shock, go straight back to compressions.
This is a reference written for bystanders, not a diagnosis, a training course or medical advice. It cannot tell you what is wrong with a particular person, and it does not replace the dispatcher on the other end of an emergency call — they can see what is near you and they will talk you through it. If you are worried about your own heart, or about a symptom, that is a conversation with a clinician rather than a page on a website.
Why minutes are the whole subject
A cardiac arrest is not a heart attack. The pump stops, consciousness goes within seconds, and the brain begins to be damaged within minutes. For the rhythms a defibrillator can correct, the widely used approximation is that the chance of survival falls by roughly ten percentage points for every minute between the collapse and the shock — and that good chest compressions flatten that curve considerably. An ambulance responding in eight to fifteen minutes cannot get inside that window. A device in a cabinet a hundred metres away can, and a pair of hands already on the chest certainly can.
That single piece of arithmetic explains everything else on this surface: why bystanders matter more than equipment, why dispatchers coach compressions down the phone, why countries build registers so the dispatcher can see the nearest device, and why Denmark alerts fifty thousand volunteers rather than buying more ambulances.
Why there is no map of devices on this page
You arrived here looking for the nearest defibrillator, and the honest answer is that a website is the wrong tool. Device lists decay: cabinets move, shops close, buildings are refurbished, and a pin that sends a runner to an empty wall in the third minute of an arrest is worse than no pin at all. The national registers that are kept current are not open data and cannot be copied. And the register that actually helps in an emergency is the dispatcher's, reached by calling rather than browsing.
So this surface does the two things it can do honestly: it points you at the register that reaches the dispatcher in your own country, and it spends the rest of its effort on the parts that do not go out of date — recognising an arrest, compressions, the device itself, and how to get a device you own into the system. If you want an open map to learn your own neighbourhood in advance, the OpenStreetMap layer is the one to use, and the open data page explains its licence and its gaps.
The register your dispatcher reads
Seven countries, three quite different models: a national register with a volunteer responder scheme on top of it, a national register alone, and no public register at all. One page each, with the emergency number, who answers it, what exists and how to get a device listed.
| Country | Emergency number | Who answers | National defibrillator register | Volunteer responders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Estonia | 112 | Häirekeskus | No public national register | No nationwide scheme |
| Finland | 112 | Hätäkeskuslaitos | defi.fi — over 12 000 devices | No nationwide scheme; devices shown in 112 Suomi |
| Latvia | 112 | NMPD for the medical response | No public national register | No nationwide scheme |
| Lithuania | 112 | Bendrasis pagalbos centras | Database held by the emergency medical service | No nationwide scheme; devices required by law in some venues |
| Sweden | 112 | SOS Alarm | Hjärtstartarregistret | SMSlivräddare |
| Norway | 113 (110 fire, 112 police) | Emergency medical communication centre | Hjertestarterregisteret (NAKOS) — free | Lay responders alerted through the emergency system |
| Denmark | 112 | Regional emergency medical dispatch | Hjertestarter-Netværket — over 26 000 devices | TrygFonden Hjerteløber — over 55 000 volunteers |
What to do, right now
The pages a bystander needs, in roughly the order the emergency asks for them. Each one is written for somebody with no training who is standing there now.
Is this a cardiac arrest?
Two checks decide it: not responding, and not breathing normally. The noisy gasping that fools nearly everyone, why a brief seizure at the start is a cardiac sign, and why a heart attack is a different emergency.
Hands-only CPR, in sixty seconds
Centre of the chest, 100 to 120 pushes a minute, 5 to 6 cm deep, let the chest come all the way back up, and do not stop. The rate, the depth, the fatigue problem, and a pacer that keeps you on the beat.
The emergency call, and the address problem
What the dispatcher asks, why the phone goes on speaker on the floor, how dispatcher-guided CPR works, and the single hardest question in a rural arrest: where exactly are you?
Using a defibrillator, step by step
Open it, turn it on, bare the chest, follow the voice. What the machine decides for you, what it will never do, and the one instruction people get wrong — go straight back to compressions after the shock.
Where the pads go, and what gets in the way
Right collarbone and left ribs, or front and back. Chest hair, sweat, snow, a medicine patch, a pacemaker lump, an underwired bra, a tattoo: which of these actually matter and what to do about each.
"No shock advised" does not mean stop
The most misread sentence in public-access defibrillation. What the machine has actually detected, why roughly two thirds of arrests are not shockable, and why the pads stay on and the compressions continue.
After the shock: two-minute cycles and signs of life
What the rhythm of a resuscitation actually looks like once the machine is running, what return of circulation looks like from the outside, and what to do in the minutes between that and the ambulance.
Compression-only or 30:2?
When breaths change the outcome and when they cost more than they give. The adult rule, the exceptions that override it, and how to give a breath that actually goes in.
A child or a baby
Paediatric arrest usually starts with breathing, not with the heart. Five breaths first, one hand or two fingers, a third of the chest depth — and what to do when the defibrillator only has adult pads.
Drowning: why this one starts with breaths
A drowned person is oxygen-starved before the heart stops, so the sequence changes. Five breaths first, the water you should not try to drain, and the spinal-injury myth that costs time on a beach.
Cold: "not dead until warm and dead"
A deeply hypothermic casualty can look dead and recover completely. Why you check breathing for a full minute, why the defibrillator still goes on, and why this region's winters make it a real scenario rather than a textbook one.
Cardiac arrest in pregnancy
The bystander sequence does not change: compressions, defibrillator, shock. What does change is one pair of hands pushing the bump to the left, and why the fastest treatment for the baby is treating the mother.
Opioid and drug-related arrest
Breathing stops long before the heart does, so this is a ventilation emergency. Where naloxone fits, why it never replaces CPR, and the practical fear — that calling for help will get somebody arrested.
Rain, snow, metal and a pool deck
The environmental worries that stop bystanders using a defibrillator, answered one at a time: standing water, a steel floor, a wet chest, a moving vehicle, snow, and whether you can be shocked yourself.
How the system around it works
The pages an employer, a municipality, a club or a curious reader needs: how the chain of survival is built, what the survival numbers really say, what a device costs to keep, where to put it, and what the law does and does not require.
The chain of survival, link by link
Recognition and a call, early CPR, early defibrillation, advanced care and recovery. What each link is actually worth, which one the public owns, and where the chain breaks in practice.
What the survival numbers actually say
Roughly one in ten survives an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and the spread between towns is wider than the spread between treatments. How to read the statistics without being misled by them.
National registers, and getting your device into one
A defibrillator the dispatcher cannot see barely exists. What a national register is, which one is the real one in each country, why registration is free, and the paid look-alikes to avoid.
Volunteer responder systems
Denmark, Sweden and Norway alert trained volunteers by phone to arrests near them — one to fetch the defibrillator, one to start compressions. How the systems work, who can join, and what happens when your phone goes off.
Where public defibrillators actually are
The green sign with the heart and the lightning bolt, the places that reliably have one, the cabinets that are locked and the ones that are not, and what to do when you have thirty seconds to decide whether to go looking.
What a defibrillator costs to buy and to keep
The purchase is the small part. Pads and batteries expire on a schedule, cabinets and signage cost real money in a cold climate, and the recurring line is what an organisation forgets to budget for.
Keeping a defibrillator ready
Self-test lights, pad and battery expiry dates, the monthly walk-past, and the organisational failure behind most dead devices: nobody was named as the person responsible for it.
Where to put one in a building
The three-minute round trip is the design rule. Outdoor over indoor, entrance over office, unlocked over secure, and why a device behind a reception desk that closes at six is half a device.
Who must have one, and where you stand legally
There is no EU rule requiring defibrillators in general, but there is one requiring first-aid arrangements proportionate to risk. What that means for an employer, what individual countries add, and the bystander's position if it goes wrong.
Learning it properly
A short course changes what you do at three in the morning far more than reading does. What a basic life support course covers, who runs them in this region, how often to refresh, and what to teach a school.
The open map, and why we do not publish a device list
National registers are closed, OpenStreetMap is open and incomplete, and a copied list goes stale in months. The honest position, the licence rules, and how to add the cabinet outside your own front door.
Country by country
How the response is organised where you are, and what to do with a device you own.
Estonia: 112, kiirabi and no national AED register
One number for everything, a dispatch centre that coaches CPR down the phone, and defibrillators scattered by municipalities, employers and shops with no single public list. What that means if you are the one calling.
Finland: defi.fi and the 112 Suomi app
The best-organised defibrillator register in the Baltic Sea region: a national database run by the heart association with the resuscitation council and the Red Cross, feeding device locations to the emergency services app.
Latvia: NMPD, 112 and a patchwork of devices
The state emergency medical service answers the medical side of 112 and publishes guidance for defibrillator owners, but there is no single public register. Where devices have actually appeared, and what to do with yours.
Lithuania: a legal requirement and a service database
The one country in the region where the law names the venues that must have a defibrillator. How the 112 centre and the emergency medical service work together, and how the device database reaches the dispatcher.
Sweden: a register, a research base and SMS lifesavers
A national defibrillator register run by the resuscitation council, a quality register that has published cardiac-arrest outcomes for decades, and a volunteer scheme that grew out of the research.
Norway: 113, NAKOS and the register that is free
The medical emergency number is 113, not 112. The national defibrillator register is run by a state competence centre and costs nothing — which matters, because commercial look-alikes have been invoicing device owners.
Denmark: the network everyone else is compared to
Over 26 000 registered defibrillators and over 55 000 volunteer heart runners, built by a foundation with the regions. What the Danish model actually consists of, and which parts of it travel.
A pacer, and your coordinates
Two things a phone can genuinely do at the scene. The first paces your compressions at 110 a minute — the middle of the recommended band — and counts the two-minute marks at which a second rescuer should take over. The second reads your position out of the browser so you can say it aloud to the dispatcher, which is the fastest way to fix the hardest question in a rural emergency. Neither replaces the call.
Compression pacer
Pacer stopped
Target 100–120 per minute · 5–6 cm in an adult · swap rescuer every 2 minutes.
Read your position to the dispatcher
Say the street address if you have one. If you are on a trail, a lake, a forest road or a large site, decimal latitude and longitude are what the dispatcher wants — read the whole number including the decimals, slowly.
The numbers worth memorising
| What | Adult | Child (1 year to puberty) | Infant (under 1) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start with | Compressions | 5 rescue breaths | 5 rescue breaths |
| Rate | 100–120 per minute | 100–120 per minute | 100–120 per minute |
| Depth | 5–6 cm in an adult | About one third of chest depth | About one third of chest depth |
| Ratio if you give breaths | 30:2 | 30:2, or 15:2 with two trained rescuers | 30:2, or 15:2 with two trained rescuers |
| Defibrillator | As soon as it arrives | Paediatric pads if available, adult pads if not | Paediatric pads if available, adult pads if not |
| Rescuer change | Every 2 minutes | Every 2 minutes | Every 2 minutes |
Two things this table cannot tell you and the pages can. First, that "not breathing normally" includes the loud, irregular gasping that convinces most bystanders the person is still alive — see recognising a cardiac arrest. Second, that "no shock advised" is not an instruction to stop; the device is describing this instant's rhythm and will look again in two minutes.
Sources: European Resuscitation Council guidelines · International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) · Käypä hoito national guideline: Elvytys · taginfo — count of emergency=defibrillator objects in OpenStreetMap · checked 2026-09-08
Frequently asked questions
Where is the nearest defibrillator?
Call 112 and ask — the dispatcher can see the registered devices around you, which is something no website can do reliably. Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark run national registers you can also search yourself; Estonia and Latvia do not have one. OpenStreetMap carries an openly licensed layer with uneven coverage.
Can I use a defibrillator without training?
Yes. Public-access devices are built for untrained bystanders: you open the lid, it starts talking, and every step is spoken aloud. It analyses the rhythm itself and will not deliver a shock into a heart that does not need one, so the realistic risk is hesitating rather than harming.
What do I do first if someone collapses?
Check whether they respond and whether they are breathing normally, taking no more than ten seconds. If they are unresponsive and not breathing normally, call 112 on speaker and start chest compressions in the centre of the chest at 100 to 120 a minute, 5 to 6 centimetres deep. Send somebody else for a defibrillator.
Is gasping the same as breathing?
No, and this is the mistake that costs the most lives. Slow, irregular, snoring or fish-like gasps with long pauses between them are a sign of cardiac arrest and are present in a large share of witnessed arrests. If it is not the calm, regular breathing of a sleeping person, treat it as an arrest.
Why does this site not publish a map of defibrillators?
Because a copied device list decays fast and a pin that sends a runner to an empty wall in the third minute is worse than no pin, and because the registers that are kept current are not open data. This surface points you at the register your own dispatcher reads instead.
How much does bystander CPR actually change?
Chest compressions started by a bystander are consistently associated with roughly two to three times the survival of no bystander CPR, and the effect is largest in the first minutes. For a shockable rhythm, a defibrillator in those first minutes is the treatment; everything else is a holding action.
The part you can change before it happens
Cardiac arrest is the end of a long story, and blood pressure, resting heart rate, activity and sleep are the chapters before it. TempoLife tracks them in one place, free to start.