Ameriquest is one of the United States’s leading wholesale subprime lenders. Ameriquest was founded in 1979, in Orange County, California, as a bank, Long Beach Savings & Loan. The bank moved to Orange County in 1991 and was converted to a pure mortgage lender in 1994, renamed Long Beach Mortgage Co. In 1997, the wholesale part of the business (funding loans made by independent brokers) was spun off as a publicly traded company, called Long Beach Mortgage; the retail part of the business was renamed Ameriquest Capital and remained private. (In 1999, Washington Mutual purchased Long Beach Mortgage.) Ameriquest Mortgage is a private company held by ACC Capital Holdings, which is owned by Roland Arnall.
Defibrillation is the definitive treatment for the life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia. Defibrillation consists of delivering a therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the affected heart with a device called a defibrillator. This depolarizes a critical mass of the heart muscle, terminates the arrhythmia, and allows normal sinus rhythm to be reestablished by the body’s natural pacemaker, in the sinoatrial node of the heart.
Manual external defibrillators are used in conjunction with (or more often have inbuilt) electrocardiogram readers, which the clinician uses to diagnose a cardiac condition (most often fibrillation or tachycardia although there are some other rhythms which can be treated by different shocks). The clinician will then decide what charge (voltage) to use, based on their prior knowledge and experience, and will deliver the shock through paddles or pads on the patient’s chest. As they require detailed medical knowledge, these units are generally only found in hospitals and on some ambulances.