Pad size, orientation, and placement for defibrillation during basic life support: A systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Aim: To evaluate the impact of defibrillation pad size, orientation, and position on clinical outcomes in adult and paediatric cardiac arrest with a shockable rhythm through a systematic review of available evidence. Methods: A systematic review was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42024512443). Searches were performed across PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library up to March 31st, 2025. Studies involving adults or children with cardiac arrest and comparing pad sizes or positions were included. Risk of bias was assessed using the RoB 2.0 and ROBINS-I tools, and the certainty of evidence was evaluated using GRADE methodology. Results: Of 7855 screened studies, four met inclusion criteria, e.g. 1 randomized clinical trial (RCT) and 3 observational studies in adults, covering 1334 adult cardiac arrest patients. Evidence on pad size, deriving from an observational study enrolling 314 patients, was sparse and inconclusive, with no significant differences in defibrillation success between large and small pads (OR 0.82[0.42-1.60]). For pad orientation, no evidence was found. For pad placement, one RCT including 280 patients suggested a potential survival benefit from vector-change defibrillation using anterior-posterior (AP) pad placement in refractory ventricular fibrillation (VF), compared to the standard anterior-lateral (AL) placement (adj. RR 1.71[1.01-2.88]). Data from two observational studies including 739 patients were conflicting and limited by high risk of bias. Conclusion: Evidence remains inconclusive to support the superiority of any specific pad size, orientation or position for improving survival or neurological outcomes in cardiac arrest. However, vector-change to the AP position may offer benefit in cases of refractory VF. High-quality RCTs are needed to further inform clinical practice.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.035 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.011 | 0.010 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".