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Student's project installs school AEDs AP Nate Gross Medford senior becomes a bit of an expert on heart defibrillators By BILL KETTLER Mail Tribune Nate Gross' senior project may save a life someday. Fortunately, he didn't have to invent the machine - automatic external defibrillators (commonly known as AEDs) have been around for a few years. With minimal training, anyone can use an AED to determine whether an unconscious person is having heart trouble. The machine analyzes heart rhythms, determines whether an electric shock can help and delivers the shock. All the operator has to do is attach a pair of electrodes and follow the machine's commands. Gross made the AEDs his senior project because several cardiac incidents that occurred while he was in high school piqued his curiosity about heart disease. In 1999 an Ashland high school boy had a heart attack on the school track. In 2001 an Ashland High School senior had a cardiac arrest episode blocks from his school. And in February, soon after he started his project, a man died of a heart attack during a South Medford basketball game in Portland. "Had there been an AED at the scene, he might still be alive," Gross said. The senior project is the capstone to four years in high school in many school districts. In Medford, students choose a project that must involve at least 20 hours of work. They must also write a research paper about the project and make a 10-minute presentation to a board of judges. Over the years, students have restored cars, built boats, trained to run marathons and written books. Gross has learned more about heart disease than most 18 year-olds would care to know. "It's the number-one killer in the United States," he said, and many of those deaths are "sudden cardiac deaths," which occur with little or no warning. There's also little time to get help - a victim's chance of survival drops by 10 percent for every minute he or she goes without medical attention. "After 10 minutes you're gone for sure," he said. "And the national average response time for an ambulance is seven minutes." AEDs allow ordinary people to shock a heart back to its normal rhythm before the ambulance arrives. There's a growing movement to install them in public buildings and other places where people gather - AEDs have been placed at the Medford airport and Southern Oregon University. The Mount Ashland ski area and the Britt Festivals share a unit - the ski area uses it during the winter, and the music festival uses it during the summer. Gross pitched his idea for portable defibrillators to the folks at Mercy Flights, the Jackson County ambulance service, and found a responsive audience. Mercy Flights agreed to donate both machines, which together value $5,000, and will also train teachers to use them. "We thought it was a really good idea," said Dave Cook, Mercy Flights' director of medical operations. "We support having public AEDs all over." Gross acquired secure storage cases for the machines from Medtronics, their manufacturer. The cases include an alarm that will sound when the case is opened. But that doesn't mean Gross has finished his project. Now he's raising money to acquire dummy defibrillators to train teachers how to use the genuine article. The real AEDs can't be used for training because they have a limited shock capacity. He's gathered $560 toward the $1,000 he needs for two training machines. The trainers would be used at the high schools to teach students how to operate the defibrillators. Gross would be pleased if his project prompted other schools to install portable defibrillators, too. "I hope they're never used," he said, "but there are times when things happen. Eventually when the price of these machines drops, I hope they'll be available everywhere." Contact Nate Gross by e-mail at: [email protected] Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.