News / AED placement

A Tucson pickleball player survived cardiac arrest because an AED was close enough to run for. Here is a simple walk test any court, field or recreation program can use to check whether its AEDs are actually reachable, and what to fix when they are not.

About 40 percent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in people under 18 involve student-athletes, according to the American Heart Association. Most schools already own AEDs. Here is how to check whether they are where the athletes actually train.

A study presented in Paris on September 25, 2026 modeled 28,349 real cardiac arrests and found that only about 30 percent happened within 500 meters of a registered fixed AED. The drones got the headlines. The distance problem is the part that applies to your building today, and you can measure it with a phone timer in ten minutes.

Most coverage advice measures distance across a floor. In a multistory building the constraint is vertical, and one AED in the lobby does not cover five floors.

Where should you place an AED? A practical guide to the three-minute round-trip rule, ideal locations by facility type, signage, cabinets, and coverage planning.