| On Friday morning, shortly after 8:00AM, units from Arcadia Volunteers were alerted to respond to a call for a patient who was unconscious and had fainted. Utility 437, with a paramedic on board, was traveling in Arcadia's first-due response territory when the call for help was dispatched. The utility is a company-owned pickup truck equipped with lights, sirens, and other emergency response gear, and also carries an Automatic External Defibrillator as part of its emergency medical services complement. Because of how close the utility truck was to the scene at the time the call was dispatch, the paramedic, and the AED, arrived on scene very quickly. The patient was determined to be in cardiopulmonary arrest, also called cardiac arrest, a condition in which the patient's heart stops beating. Cardiac arrest is considered to be a highly lethal condition, unless there are some intervening factors. In many incidences, the patient's outcome can be positively impacted when the cardiac arrest is witnessed by another person, CPR is promptly started, an AED is available, and all efforts are put into play immediately. When the patient was recognized to have recently gone into cardiac arrest, the paramedic immediately placed the patient on the AED, and began to administer good, high-quality, hands-only CPR. Soon after Utility 437 arrived on scene, a medic unit from Hampstead, Carroll County arrived to assist, followed shortly behind by Ambulance 435, as well as two EMT's from Arcadia who live in the nearby area. The first arriving paramedic on scene, as well as an EMT from Ambulance 435 went with the patient in the medic unit from Hampstead to assist in resuscitation efforts, performing an advanced vascular access technique, as well as placing an artificial airway to assist the patient with breathing. The team of EMT's and Paramedic's were successful in resuscitating the patient, who was maintaining her own heartbeat on arrival at a local hospital, also called return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC). No further word on the patient's condition is available as of the time this story was published.
In this patient's case, good, high-quality CPR, as well as early access to an automatic external defibrillator, saved this patient's life. If you're interested in learning CPR, or have questions about AED's, please visit our "Learn CPR" page, or email us at info@arcadiavfc.org for more information. |
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