Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:

For the second time in less than six months, Carpentersville firefighter-paramedics have been able to save a life with the aid of an automatic CPR device.

Fire Chief John-Paul Schilling told village trustees at a recent meeting that firefighters responded to a person whose cardiac monitor rhythm had flatlined. With the use of the Lucas Chest Compression System, which provides uninterrupted chest compressions in cases of sudden cardiac arrest, the patient was revived.

 The device frees up first-responders firefighters to do other critical life-saving tasks, such as ventilation, drug therapy and defibrillation.

“If you have to move a patient, it still does CPR. In the past, before having this, when you moved the patient, there was a pause in CPR because it’s difficult for somebody to compress a chest when you can’t put an arm behind them,” Schilling said. “But this machine wraps around the torso and continually does compressions.”

The device, which cost about $14,000, was paid for by the village.

Emergency responders Firefighters were field-testing the device in July when they were able to use it to revive a woman in cardiac arrest.

“We try to save lives every day, but sometimes the patient is not physically revivable, whether it’s due to poor condition of their heart or they don’t respond well to the drugs or compressions with the machines,” Schilling said. “But there are patients where, if we can get to them quick enough and they’re in good physiological shape, we can make a difference. This case proves it.”

thanks Dan