I always found it a little unnerving that the AHA's official recommendation on the use of AEDs for infants under the age of 1 was "no recommendation." I recognize it's due to an insufficient body of evidence, but at the end of the day if you have an infant in your arms in full arrest, you still have to either shock or not; you can't just take a rain check.
Everyone seems to punt on this one. My protocols don't address it at all. Realistically most providers I know seem to take the default attitude of not shocking, and I'm sympathetic to the idea that an arrest at this age is unlikely to be secondary to V-fib, but at some point you have to ask -- if you've tried everything else, and after however many rounds of CPR you want to bother with, does this fall under "might as well try"? I imagine most people would just haul ass for the ED, but that's not how we deal with a code in any other circumstances, so I'd hate to think we're just trying to do the safe thing (because we're scared of electrocuting babies) rather than the best care.
Does anyone have a protocol or system policy that addresses this? If not, what would your personal decision be in such a situation?
