AEDs

Russell Dalziel wields a portable defibrillator like a good-hearted gunslinger. In his 42 years as an emergency medical technician, he’s pressed the electrodes to the chests of three people suffering cardiac arrests. He was zapping them within minutes. “I wasn’t known for being...

Portable defibrillators seem so commonplace these days that people in danger of heart failure can buy one online for about $1,200. But the two-decade movement to make the life-saving devices as handy as fire extinguishers is all but flatlining. Some analysts say the explosive growth that triggered...