Instead of looking for magical healing potions in virtual worlds, these players scour buildings for defibrillators that haven't been cataloged yet.
The money is often wasted, for example on billiard tables, barbecues and, in one case, defibrillators.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at 112,000 implants of cardioverter defibrillators done over the past four years.
In people who truly need them, for conditions that can fatally disrupt heart rhythm, defibrillators can be life-saving.
More than half a million pacemakers and defibrillators are now implanted each year, each of which will see out its battery life supervising and regulating tens of millions of heartbeats.
“Take patients who just had a heart attack,” Dr. Khatib said. “Two randomized controlled studies show that defibrillators do not benefit patients who just had a heart attack.
The new findings fit into a larger pattern of misuse of defibrillators: paradoxically, previous research has also found that many people who need defibrillators do not get them.
Many people with severe heart failure already have defibrillators to zap their hearts if they suffer a rhythm problem.
Two randomized controlled studies show that defibrillators do not benefit patients who just had a heart attack.
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