Benefit of mechanical chest compression devices in mountain HEMS: lessons learned from 1 year of experience and evaluation.
Air Medical Journal · 2014-01-01 · Observational study
Abstract
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.