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"Ambulance Drone" Prototype Unveiled In Holland
schwit1 writes with news about a flying defibrillator designed by a Dutch student. A Dutch-based student on Tuesday unveiled a prototype of an "ambulance drone", a flying defibrillator able to reach heart attack victims within precious life-saving minutes. Developed by Belgian engineering graduate Alec Momont, it can fly at speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour (60 miles per hour). "Around 800,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest in the European Union every year and only 8.0 percent survive, the main reason for this is the relatively long response time of emergency services of around 10 minutes, while brain death and fatalities occur with four to six minutes,"
Sure hope that's a typo, or heart attacks are really fatal over there.
No, you just misread a badly written article.
The 8% is for cardiac arrest, i.e. the heart stops, without a defibrillator.
Heart attacks generally (myocardial infarction) are not quite so bad.
a) defibrillation alone without medication and oxygen has a very low success rate
Citation needed. A defibrillator can do a world of wonders when a heart is in fibrillation. I.e. what it's designed for. The success rate of having one on hand is very high. Oxygen helps but is not critical and medication is not necessary right away.
but to find someone who can apply it.
The first letter of AED stands for "Automated". Most AEDs I have seen has a big button on it and when you turn it on it will actually talk you through the complete process of using it and even performing CPR. I say most because those without buttons will start instructions as soon as you open the case.
The only thing training does is make you aware that you will likely need to find an AED, and if you can remember your training you can skip through the instructions which can eat a valuable 30 seconds or so.
Basically if you can't figure out how to use an AED then you probably won't be able to save a life even with training. Heck most of them have pictures which show what to do so you don't even need to be able to speak the language to figure it out, though again it may save you 30 seconds or so if you do.
Mythybusters proved that is only a problem in unusual and unlikely circumstances so any man that does that deserves to be labeled a sex offender. Their kind just goes around looking for reasons to take off our clothes. The AED excuse is not a valid one.
The AED instructions (written in the manual and spoken by the machine upon activation) almost always state to remove clothing. Non-professions would almost certainly be covered by a good samaritan law (heck, you're covered if you accidentally kill them, let alone expose them in public). Professionals who disregard the instructions given by the device might even be liable for malpractice. The instructions given by the device are approved by the FDA, and the device is only certified to be effective if used in accordance with instructions.
Sure, the bra might not cause sparks, but you're supposed to do things by the book. The AED is not programmed to argue with an operator - the instructions are streamlined for emergency use and if there is some reason the model might be less effective with a bra on the instructions will not say so - they're just written as if they will be followed.
It has been a long time since I saw that Mythbusters episode and I was not very familiar with AED operation at the time, but something that occurred to me subsequently is that they probably didn't test the diagnostics capability of the AED. If the presence of a wire near the sensors interferes with the diagnostics in the device it may make an incorrect treatment decision, either failing to shock somebody who should be shocked, or delivering a shock to somebody who should not receive one. Either is potentially a life-threatening error. It would not really be possible to test this without proper equipment/etc, since you need to simulate the heart/chest/skin/etc electrically to do it.
In any case, anybody reputable who would testify in court is going to say that the primary consideration should be to take any measure that will maximize the likelihood of saving the patient's life, and that is going to include removing clothing. Why take a chance over something as silly as modesty? If you show up in a hospital trauma OR the first thing they're going to do is chop every stitch of clothing off of you, and for good reason.
5 minutes for the brain if the blood is not already hyper-oxygenated. People with heart problems rarely, rarely have hyper oxygenated blood.
Oh, and my credentials: 3 years working ambulance, teaching certificates for Red Cross and Heart Association CPR, done CPR twice, sadly enough neither patient survived.
Not to mention that a) defibrillation alone without medication and oxygen has a very low success rate and b) not all cardiac dysrhythmias respond to defibrillation. And not all pulseless patients are having a heart attack. Try defibrillating a brain aneurysm or a pulmonary embolism and see what you get. Just like the defibrillators in airports - how many have been used successfully to date? This is good news only for companies that sell defibrillators.
I am an Emergency Room RN, with 8+ years of experience, including Advanced Cardiac Life Support.
Most of the research of which I'm aware shows that early defibrillation is second only to good CPR in the vast majority of cases. Studies from Japan have showed that the most common medication, epinephrine, actually does nothing more than allow a body to get to the hospital with a non-functioning brain, but it has been used for so long by out of hospital providers that it is a very difficult thing to remove from the protocols ("but, we have to do something!") Oxygen is also being stressed less, as research shows that it can cause vasoconstriction of the coronary arteries.
Out of hospital survival rates for cardiac arrest are lower than most people think (as are in-hospital rates, though they are higher. See http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/... for U.S. statistics). The reason for higher survival rates in the hospital setting are varied, but the biggest reason is that you have trained people nearby, and quick access to the one thing that makes a real difference - early defibrillation of an appropriate arrhythmia.
Early AED delivery in the field could be of great assistance in the right circumstances.
BTW, an AEDs do not recommend defibrillation unless it senses a "Shockable Rhythm," i.e. Ventricular Tachycardia or Fibrillation. OP is correct that there are other rhythms which do not respond to defibrillation, but a) AEDs are good at recognizing them, and b) rates of survival to neurologically-intact discharge are much lower, on the order of a full order of magnitude. A patient with Pulmonary Embolus or Aneurysm (or Seizure for that matter) would not have either of these rhythms.
"The problems in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking which created them" --Albert Einstein