A medical device that delivers an electric shock to restore normal heartbeat when someone's heart is in a dangerous rhythm.
From 'de-' (to reverse) plus 'fibrillation' (irregular heartbeat), from Latin 'fibrilla,' a small fiber. The device literally reverses the disordered fiber-like quivering of the heart.
The first defibrillators were invented by accident in the 1960s when researchers noticed that electric shocks could restart hearts—now they're so common that many public places have them mounted on walls, making sudden cardiac death much more survivable!
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