Consumers are unlikely to benefit from buying household versions of emergency equipment meant to revive victims of sudden heart seizures, according to long-awaited results from a clinical trial announced Tuesday.

The equipment  automated external defibrillators  has been marketed to health-conscious consumers for its ability to provide life-saving jolts of electricity to people whose hearts have stopped beating, or are beating so chaotically and rapidly that they could die within minutes.

In reporting their findings at a major cardiology meeting in Chicago and online in The New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers who conducted the trial noted that the devices clearly save lives in hospitals, emergency vehicles and in busy public settings like airports and casinos where trained employees are on duty.

But the study, which included more than 7,000 patients at risk of having the seizures because of previous heart attacks, found that patients in homes equipped with the gear died at the same rate as those without it.