Excerpts from the Chicagotribune.com:

The Elgin Fire Department intends to use a $72,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to purchase state-of-the-art equipment to be used when performing CPR.

The city council Wednesday night is set to move along for final approval the purchase from Michigan-based Stryker for $79,400, with $7,200 of the money coming from the fire department’s capital budget. Stryker is the owner of Washington-based Physio-Control, which makes the system.

We will be getting five of the systems, one for every frontline ambulance,” Fire Chief Dave Schmidt said Tuesday.

“It’s great tool to have in the community,” said Dr. Mohammad Zaman, Medical Director, CEP America, Presence St. Joseph Hospital Elgin.

The systems are designed to provide consistent, high-quality mechanical chest compressions that meet the American Heart Association standards for rate, depth and speed. Part of the apparatus goes under a person’s back, while the other part wraps over a person’s chest and holds a device which applies the compressions, which can be adjusted to the size of the person.

The Lucas Chest Compression System the department plans to buy allows firefighters to keep CPR going while a patient is on a stretcher and while the patient is being moved, even up or down stairs.

The machines also take away lapses in applying CPR thus lessening health-related issues for patients and keep the compressions consistent, taking away the fatigue factor when a paramedic is applying the compressions. Current protocol calls for CPR to be applied for 30 minutes before terminating resuscitation efforts.

Schmidt said the systems also mean more safety for paramedics while in ambulances, who now can wear a seat belt while chest compressions are being applied by the battery-operated machine.

The systems are Bluetooth enabled so that they can transmit the data they collect to the department’s computer system and to the hospital to which a patient is being taken.

 

Statistics show that each year in the United States, more than 300,000 individuals suffer non-traumatic, out-of-hospital, sudden cardiac arrest, which has been the leading cause of death in adults over 40. The Elgin Fire Department responds to about 56 cardiac arrest incidents annually.

During a four-month trial of the two mechanical CPR systems, the Return of Spontaneous Circulation (ROSC) percentage rate in cardiac arrest victims rose from 36 percent to almost 58 percent, Schmidt said. Upon completion of the trial, the rate returned to 36, or about 10 percent higher than the national ROSC average.

Tags: Elgin Fire Department, fire department receives federal grant, Lucas Chest Compression System, Return of Spontaneous Circulation