NEW HAVEN — The Fire Department medic crew had just recently loaded the Lucas device back onto the emergency unit at the fire academy when the 911 call came in of a cardiac arrest on Sherman Avenue.
A short time later, the crew arrived with the patient at Yale-New Haven Hospital with the $14,000 contraption delivering potentially life-saving compressions to his chest and, consequently, oxygen to his brain.
“The patient arrived here at the ER with the device pumping up and down,” said Dr. David Cone, who was working in the emergency room when the unidentified man arrived. “The machine did its job. He arrived here with a pulse.”
After a test run last year, the Fire Department last month bought two of the Swedish-made automated chest-compression systems. The device takes the place of a medic doing manual compressions during cardiopulmonary resuscitation, delivering 100 perfect compressions per minute as prescribed by the American Heart Association.
And it never tires out — at least until the compressed-air canister that powers the piston runs out. That’s roughly in 39 minutes.
The units are marketed in the U.S. by Physio-control of Seattle.
“It looks a little intimidating, but once you actually see it work, it’s pretty impressive,” said Firefighter Erika Bogan, an emergency medical technician assigned to Emergency Company 2.
It’s an open question of whether automated compressors like Lucas give patients any better outcomes than those given manual compressions by medics. That’s up to researchers to determine with much larger pools of patients, Cone said, but he added that the Lucas system tested very well during the Fire Department’s 60-day trial that started in late 2007. The department liked it enough to equip both Emergency 1 and 2, the two fire ambulances.
Abe Colon, the department’s EMS supervisor, said all 19 paramedics in the department have been trained to use it, as has the staff in the emergency rooms of Y-NH and the Hospital of Saint Raphael.
Without CPR, a person is considered biologically dead after four to six minutes and is clinically dead after six to 10 minutes.
“That’s what’s so critical about response times,” said Fire Chief Michael Grant. The target is three to five minutes for first-responding engines staffed by EMT/firefighters, who can start medical treatment until paramedics from the fire ambulances or American Medical Response arrive. The target response time for the fire ambulance is three to eight minutes.
Firefighter/paramedic Robert Doyle admitted he was skeptical when the device was introduced last year but was won over. Medics start manual compressions while the device is being readied. Then, the process of slipping the backboard under the patient, clipping on the compressor and starting it up takes a matter of seconds, he said.
Bogan said that frees up the medic’s hands to do things such as intubating, starting an intravenous line and hooking up the life pack monitor.
On Thursday, the department gave a demonstration at the fire academy, and about 20 minutes after loading the device back on the unit, Bogan and Doyle were dispatched to Sherman Avenue.
Cone said the patient was by no means out of the woods, and his prognosis remained unclear so soon after the incident, but the Lucas device, he said, did its job.
William Kaempffer can be reached at wkaempffer@nhregister.com or 789-5727.