what are the irons used in hospitals called that start people's hearts again through electric shocks?

Answer 1

The actual machine used is called a defibrillator, which uses an AC current to jolt the heart back into beating.

When someone has a heart bypass, a DC current is used to stop the heart, then an AC current is used to re-start it.

You often here of people using these machine talking about Joules - this is just the amount of energy that the heart is shocked with (normally between 200 and 300 Joules.)

Hope this helps.

You can read this rather good article for more info-:

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_3/2.html

Answer 2

The pads are usually called paddles or electrodes. They're not iron though. Their use is to stop a living heart from defibrullating rather than to start a stopped one.
A heart in fibruallation is alve but not pumping blood. It's lost its rhythm and cannot fill and empty its chambers. A dfribulator is normally quite successful if used quickly enough and properly.

A stopped heart is usually stopped because it's dead. If you re-start it as soon as its stopped then the patient may recover, any delay and they may not recover.

The super-panic situations seen in most American hospital dramas would be very unlikely to succeed.


Doctor Q has provided more information about defibrullators..

Don't try it at home with a domestic iron.

Answer 3

Defibrillators