[jdietrich]

Generally not, for two reasons.

Firstly, the people most at risk of cardiac arrest are unlikely to regain any meaningful quality of life after resuscitation. An AED might bring a very elderly and/or very ill person back from the dead, but more often than not they'll be just barely alive afterwards, which is not an outcome that most people would choose for themselves. People who are close to the end of their natural lives would benefit much more from serious conversations about end-of-life care than expensive gadgets and false hope.

Secondly, most of the risk of cardiac arrest in younger and relatively healthier people is preventable. If you're not a frail elderly person but you consider yourself at risk of cardiac arrest, it's very likely that you're at least one of: obese, sedentary, hypertensive, poorly-managed diabetic. Before you go out and buy an AED, give some serious thought to what kind of state you'd be in after surviving a cardiac arrest and to whether you'd rather take meaningful action to improve your health now.

Some people with cardiac abnormalities might be good candidates for an at-home AED, but they'd generally be better candidates for an ICD. A young and otherwise healthy person with a condition like LQTS, Brugada or severe HCM is at very real risk of sudden cardiac arrest, but the most likely trigger for that arrest would be strenuous physical exercise - something that most of us don't do in our own homes.