Benefit of Mechanical Chest Compression Devices in Mountain HEMS: Lessons Learned From 1 Year of Experience and Evaluation

Publication

Benefit of Mechanical Chest Compression Devices in Mountain HEMS: Lessons Learned From 1 Year of Experience and Evaluation

Journal Paper/Review - Nov 17, 2014

Pietsch Urs

Citation

Pietsch U. Benefit of Mechanical Chest Compression Devices in Mountain HEMS: Lessons Learned From 1 Year of Experience and Evaluation. Air Medical Journal 2014; 33:299-301.

Type

Journal Paper/Review (English)

Journal

Air Medical Journal 2014; 33

Publication Date

Nov 17, 2014

Pages

299-301

Publisher

elservier

Brief description/objective

Introduction
Pre-hospital care of cardiac arrest patients in the mountain environment is one of the most challenging problems for helicopter medical emergency services (HEMS) teams. To provide high-quality chest compression with minimal hand s-off-time is very demanding in the alpine area.

Methods
We used and evaluated mechanical chest compression devices (Lucas and AutoPulse) and investigated if these are good and useful tools in the alpine HEMS. Over a period of 12 months we performed 7 CPRs in remote alpine terrain.

Conclusion
On the strength of our past experience, CPR under special circumstances like deep hypothermia, in which a prolonged CPR is essential, the use of the Lucas and/or AutoPulse was an easy and sufficient tool even in difficult alpine terrain which requires special rescue missions like winch or MERS evacuation.