Tv and movies show them as a magical heart restart machine, bringing people back from the dead. But I’ve heard medical professionals say that’s not true, but they never elaborate. I’ve seen portable ones everywhere, so they must be needed fairly regularly.
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They are the medical equivalent of [this classic scene.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Cpc8Vw-2A)
Sometimes, for various reasons, the heart freaks out and beats frantically like a newborn horse trying to run. This means a chamber might be squeezing before it has enough blood in it, or not squeezing at all, meaning blood is flowing erratically, if at all. This is just really bad and will usually kill you.
A heart defibrillator basically *slaps* the heart with a bolt of electricity and then the heart reboots like a computer, hopefully back to normal.
The implication is that the heart is *still beating* in the first place, just beating wrong. If the heart is fully stopped the electricity isn’t to magically make it start beating again. There are other techniques that can help with that, such as CPR, but the AED is for making the heart beat normally, not restart it.
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