Tag Archives: pre-hospital

The Myth of Error-Free


This guest post from a fellow retrieval clinician contains a powerful message for us all. We have a responsibility to recognise the inevitability of clinician error, and to develop systems within our organisations to support those involved to avoid the ‘second victim’ phenomenon.

– 0:01: Error – Noun – A mistake
I was the picture perfect hire, I had tailored most of my career for our line of work: retrieval.

I was a senior FRU Paramedic with a background including the hottest terms: “clinical development”, “ultrasound”, “research”, “educator” and the useless alphabet soup that one inevitably acquires through enough time in healthcare. My CV was mint, printed on subtly thick paper to give a subliminal message of “excellence” – calculated moves for a calculated outcome.

I knew the protocols, policies, procedures before stepping through the door. With a fantastic orientation behind me, I was fucking awesome. I was in the stratosphere of awesome. Flightsuit, the smell of Jet A, podcasts blaring. I approached the one-year mark in retrieval feeling at home. Being granted complete clinical autonomy, I found my work deeply rewarding, stimulating. Nitric Oxide, ECMO, Ketamine, DSI/RSI, TXAblahblahblah. The buzz of Twitter was my daily work.

“Error” was a word, a noun. Error was a picture of crashed airplanes or derailed trains. Droning Powerpoints featured the Swiss cheese model and non-sequitur diagrams with abstract buzz-words. If you sucked, you crashed and burned. If you were good, you landed on the goddamn Hudson River.


+ 0:01: I am Error
Through an error in medication transitions, a young girl died under my care. Regardless of the slew of contributing factors, the latent errors – I am Proximate Cause. That is a title that is hard to shed. That is a title that follows you through day and night, wakefulness and sleep, at work, in the car, in the shower, in bed.

Having lost my desire to return to work, I drafted a curt letter of resignation and began the search for work elsewhere where I might be free of consequence. I was filled with dread waiting for my pager to go off, whispering a prayer for an easy tasking. I lacked the organizational or personal tools to process the slew of emotions I felt – incompetence, inadequacy and guilt. Just as easily as I had woven myself into who I was, I came undone.

+ 0:02: “Error-Free” – Adjective – Containing no mistakes
Despite our best attempts to adopt the lessons of aviation, aerospace and high-stakes systems into our craft, we in retrieval are primed for error throughout the work we do every day. We dive into the currents of diagnostic momentum, wading through the thoughts of others. The chaos swirling around us leads to erosion of situational awareness and the interruption of processes. The unforgiving physiology of the critically ill also force us to tread close to the edge. The margins are razor-thin, the consequences are great.

Just like we prepare for the risks involved with a complex machine such as the helicopter, we must train for the consequences of the complexities of medicine, such as error.

Our teams train for the very remote risk of over-water ditching through egress training yet little time is spent on a constant danger to our teams and our patients. The injection of simulated error through misdiagnoses, human factors and poorly labeled vials can not only prime the team for the capture of potential error but also the very real emotions that can result from mistakes – simulated or not. Much discussion has been had on resiliency training as of late, much of its focus on preparing teams for success in the midst of crisis. We must train for events such as an error like mine to prepare the individual clinician for the crisis that follows.

Yet the burden should not fall squarely on the individual clinician. As high performing organizations we have a duty to put in place transparent processes that can provide clinicians with support following a mistake as well as a clarity about “what comes next” following a mistake. As I consider my subsequent hardship following the death of this child, much of it took root in the lack of support from my organization and a lack of clarity about what would happen as a result of all this. More damaging than anything else is the solitude that comes with being unable to share one’s experience. A “second victim” left to their own devices to cope with their mistake is a victim of a system that has failed them.

We are equally primed for injury. One of your greatest strengths becomes your Achilles heel. We pursue our passions and find that resus and retrieval is the medicine that stimulates the cortex. This work inevitably becomes a fundamental part of who we are. The pursuit of excellence under the demanding conditions of our work is all-consuming, leading to this work become the very mesh of our being – “The Retrievalist” “The Resuscitationist.”

Following error, we experience an unraveling of who we are. The hard fall to the bottom is hard to recover from. I write this to let you know that it gets better and that you’re not alone. The resignation letter is deleted, the bottles stop emptying, the sleep comes more easily and you accept that in our craft, “error-free” is just a word, an adjective and that “error” is a noun and does not define you.

 

Above HEMS image credit: Dr Fiona Reardon

 

Related Resources:

All Alone on Kangaroo Island” by Tim Leeuwenburg

Medical Error” by Simon Carley

 

Hilar Twists & Human Error

An engaging scene from ‘Code Blue‘ demonstrated a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service team managing a patient with major thoracic haemorrhage. They did a right thoracotomy and wanted to clamp the hilum but there was some kit missing from the pack.

Unfortunately, the video is no longer available.

This scene had some great discussion points for prehospital professionals, even if the specific scenario is somewhat unlikely for most people’s practice:

  • Non-compressible haemorrhage is possibly the biggest single clinical challenge when you’re a long way from hospital
  • Agitated friends and family can be disruptive – allocate a rescuer to look after them
  • Having blood products to give is essential
  • Don’t rely on the memory of individuals, who are fallible, to pack your equipment. “I was sure I put them in” didn’t cut it when the team needed forceps to clamp the pulmonary hilum and stop the bleeding. Checklists are the in thing, for good reason.
  • Luckily, you don’t need to clamp the hilum (which is tricky) in massive unilateral thoracic haemorrhage. You can just twist the lung 180 degrees on the hilum so it’s upside down. This can prevent further haemorrhage and air embolism.

What’s a hilar twist then?

The hilar twist manoeuvre, as it’s called, is worth learning if you’re a clinician who is prepared to do resuscitative clamshell thoracotomy for penetrating traumatic cardiac arrest. The clamshell is quick and provides excellent exposure(1) and is preferred to lateral thoracotomy(2).

The primary purpose of clamshell thoracotomy in penetrating traumatic arrest is to relieve cardiac tamponade and control a cardiac wound(3). It is well described and continues to save lives in the prehospital setting(4).

However, sometimes you’ll open the chest and the pericardium will be empty (other than containing the heart of course), and there will be massive haemorrhage on one side of the chest. Although most of these patients will be unsalvageable outside a trauma centre’s operating room, it’s worth trying something once you’ve gone to all the trouble of opening the chest. The hilar twist(5) is probably the best option for the non-surgeon, especially when some muppet’s forgotten to pack a clamp.

In order to make the lung mobile enough to twist, it’s first necessary to cut through the inferior pulmonary ligament. This is also known as simply the pulmonary ligament (because there’s no superior equivalent) and sometimes the inferior hilar ligament. It’s not actually a ligament, but an extension of the parietal pleura extending downwards in a fold from the hilum. Some describe it as hanging down from the hilum like a ‘wizard’s sleeve’, which invariably gets a giggle from some of our trainees from the United Kingdom for some reason.

 

After cutting the ligament completely to the level of the inferior pulmonary vein, the lung is then twisted ‘lower lobe towards you’, ie. lower lobe is rotated anteriorly over the upper lobe until the lung is oriented ‘upside down’. The twisted vessels around the hilum become occluded and further haemorrhage from that side should be limited. Other priorities in the arrested patient will be aortic occlusion, internal cardiac massage, and blood products. Packs may be required to keep the lung from untwisting, and if return of spontaneous circulation is achieved, there is a risk of dysrhythmia, right heart failure, and refractory hypoxaemia.

I’ve only done this on pigs and human cadavers so am not speaking from any reassuring level of experience or competence. The literature is out there to read, and it’s up to you to decide how you want to expand or limit your options when you’ve cracked that chest in an arrested patient.

References

1. Flaris AN, Simms ER, Prat N, Reynard F, Caillot J-L, Voiglio EJ. Clamshell incision versus left anterolateral thoracotomy. Which one is faster when performing a resuscitative thoracotomy? The tortoise and the hare revisited. World J Surg. 2015 May;39(5):1306–11.

2. Simms ER, Flaris AN, Franchino X, Thomas MS, Caillot J-L, Voiglio EJ. Bilateral Anterior Thoracotomy (Clamshell Incision) Is the Ideal Emergency Thoracotomy Incision: An Anatomic Study. World J Surg. 2013 Feb 23;37(6):1277–85.

3. Wise D. Emergency thoracotomy: “how to do it.” Emerg Med J. 2005 Jan 1;22(1):22–4.

4. Davies GE, Lockey DJ. Thirteen Survivors of Prehospital Thoracotomy for Penetrating Trauma: A Prehospital Physician-Performed Resuscitation Procedure That Can Yield Good Results. The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care. 2011 May;70(5):E75–8.

5. Wilson A, Wall MJ Jr., Maxson R, Mattox K. The pulmonary hilum twist as a thoracic damage control procedure. The American Journal of Surgery. 2003 Jul;186(1):49–52.

Louisa in London – Prehospital Lessons from LTC2015

The London Trauma Conference remains up there on my list of ‘must go’ conferences to attend. It marks the end of the year, fills me with hope and inspires me for the future. Unfortunately this year I was torn between the conference and the demands of clinical directorship so I could only get to the “Air Ambulance & Prehospital Care Day”. At least this way I’m saved from the dilemma of which sessions to attend!
So what were the highlights of the Prehospital Day? For me, they were Prehospital ECMO,’Picking Up the Pieces’, and the REBOA update.
Prehospital ECMO
Professor Pierre Carli gave us an update on prehospital ECMO. Professor Carli (not to be confused with the equally awesome Professor Carley) is the medical director of Service d’Aide Médicale Urgente (SAMU) in Paris. They’ve been doing prehospital ECMO in Paris since 2011 and the data analysed over three years reveals a 10% survival to hospital discharge rate. We know from the work in Asia that successful outcome following traditional cardiac arrest management and ECPR is related to the speed of the intervention. Transposing the time to intervention from his 2011 – 2013 data onto the survival curve that Chen et al produced explains why the success rate is limited:
LTC2015
The revised 2015 process aims to reduce the duration of CPR, reduce time to ECMO and therefore improve survival to discharge rates. They are doing this by dispatching the ECMO team earlier.
The eligibility criteria for ECPR is also changing; patients >18 and <75years, refractory cardiac arrest (defined as failure of ROSC after 20min of CPR), no flow for < 5 minutes with shockable rhythm or signs of life or hypothermia or intoxication, EtCO2 > 10mmHg at time of inclusion and no major comorbidity.
Already there appears to be an improvement with 16 patients treated using the revised protocol with 5 survivors (31%) – although we must be wary of the small numbers.
A concern that was expressed by the French Department of Health was the fear of a reduction in organ donation with the introduction of ECPR – it turns out that rates have remained stable. In fact the condition of non heart beating donated organs is better when ECMO has been instigated; the long term effects on organ donation are being assessed.
I’m without doubt that prehospital ECMO/ED ECMO is the future although currently in the UK our hospital systems aren’t ready for this. If you want to learn more then look at the ED ECMO site or book on one of the many emerging courses on ED ECMO including the one that is run by Dr Simon Finney at the London Trauma Conference, or if you want to go further afield you could try San Diego (although places are fully booked on the next course).
Picking Up the Pieces
The Keynote speaker was Professor Sir Simon Wessely. He is a psychiatrist with a specialist interest in military psychology and his brief was to describe to us the public response to traumatic incidents. He has worked with the military and in civilian situations. After the 7/7 London bombings the population of London was surveyed: those most likely to be affected were of lower social class, of Muslim faith, those that had a relative that was injured, those unsure of the safety of others, those with no previous experience of terrorism and those experiencing difficulty in contacting others by mobile phone. Obviously there are many factors that we cannot influence however on the basis of the last risk factor our response to incidents has changed – the active discouragement to make phone calls has been changed to a recommendation of making short calls to friends and relatives.
The previous practice of offering immediate psychological debriefing to those involved in incidents was discounted by Prof Wessely – his research demonstrated that this intervention was not only not required but could actually result in harm: only a minority have ongoing psychological distress that can benefit from formal psychological input, which should occur later.
The approach that should be taken is to allow that individual to utilise their own social networks (family, friends, and colleagues) and to accept that in some cases the individual may not want or need to talk. This has led to the development of the Trauma Risk Management (TRIM) system which provides individuals within organisations that are exposed to traumatic events the skills required to identify those at risk of developing psychological problems and to recognise the signs and symptoms of those in difficulty. To a certain extent we naturally do this for our peers – I have spent many a night sitting in the ‘Good Samaritan’ pub with colleagues from the Royal London Hospital and London’s Air Ambulance – but having a more formal system is probably of benefit to enable those who have ongoing difficulties to access additional support.
REBOA update
Finally, the REBOA update – Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta. One year on, Dr Sammy Sadek informed us that there are now more courses teaching the REBOA technique than there are (prehospital) patients that have received it. Over the last year only seven patients have qualified for this intervention in London, far fewer than they had anticipated. Another three patients died before REBOA could be instigated. All patients had a positive cardiovascular response. Four of the seven died from causes other than exsanguination. Is it worth all the effort and resource to deliver this intervention when such a select group will benefit?
Obviously there was much more covered in the day, this is just a taste. If you’ve never been to the London Trauma Conference then I definitely would recommend it and even if you have been before there are so many breakout sessions now there is always something for everyone.
More on the London Trauma Conference:

Merry Christmas and see you next year!
Louisa Chan

London Trauma Conference 2014 Part 2

Day three is Air Ambulance and pre-hospital day and the great and the good are here en mass.
The heavy weights are coming out to make their points…..
selfUnarguably the best lecture of the day was delivered by our very own Cliff Reid on prehospital training. Using Sydney HEMS induction training he highlighted the challenges posed to prehospital services training doctors and paramedics rotating through the service.
Turning a good inhospital doctor into a great prehospital one in the space of an induction program requires focus. Knowledge is therefore not the focus of training, performance is. Often doctors already possess the clinical skills and knowledge and it is the application of these pre existing skills in challenging environments when cognitively overloaded that is the key.
 
The Sydney HEMS program provides the mindware and communication skills the practitioner needs to do this and drills these skills in simulated environments. He uses perturbation, so like the Bruce protocol exercise test the simulations just get harder until you are at the very limits of your bandwidth. Debriefing of course is important but the recommended protracted debrief is often impractical and unnecessary so simulations designed with cognitive traps are used to highlight learning points and are drilled until the message is received. In this way tress exposure enhances cognitive resilience. And importantly they use cross training, so the doctors and the paramedics undergo the same program so each member of the team understands the challenges faced by the other.
Does this sound like fun? For the shrinking violets out there it could be seen as threatening. But for the adrenaline junkies…….hell yeah!
It’s truly a training ethos that I buy into and I’d love to be able to achieve that standard of training in my own service.

SydneyHEMStops
Sydney HEMS Friends and Colleagues at the LTC

 
mwaveMicrowaves seem to be the future if diagnostic testing. This modality is fast, is associated with a radiation dose lower than that of a mobile phone, non invasive, portable and has been shown to provide good information. It can be used on heads for intracranial haemorrhage and stroke or chests for pneumothorax detection. It’s all in the early stages but seems like it will be a viable option in the future.
For further reading check out:
Diagnosis of subdural and intraparenchymal intracranial hemorrhage using a microwave-based detector
Clinical trial on subdural detection
Pneumothorax detection
 
How would you transfer a psychotic patient requiring specialist intervention that can only be received after aeromedical transfer? Stefan Mazur of MedSTAR, the retrieval service in South Australia shared their experience with ketamine to facilitate the safe transfer of these patients with no reports of adverse effects on the mental state of the patient, as first described by Minh Le Cong and colleagues. Is there no end to the usefulness of this drug? No wonder we’re experiencing a supply issue in the UK!
And finally, the ultimate reflective practice should include the post mortem of our critically sick patients. The approach the forensic pathologist takes is similar to a clinician (with the time pressure removed). They read the scene and use this information to predict injuries (sound familiar?). Post mortem CT scanning with recon provides yet another layer of information. We are missing a trick if we don’t seek this feedback to correlate with our clinical findings. Even better, rare practical skills are often routinely performed as part of the post mortem – we should be making use of this opportunity to train.

How You Train is How You Fight

Simulation makes us more effective. I think it’s good to consider how one would deal with emergency situations in every day life, and practice the response. There are ALWAYS learning points.
My four year old son Kal brought along his rubber red bellied black snake on a New Year’s Day bush walk with my family. Too good an opportunity to miss, so we practiced managing a snakebite scenario. What we did and what we learned are summarised in this three minute video:

 
This was a worthwhile exercise. Learning points were:
1. Carry a knife to help cut up the teeshirt (if you don’t carry bandages)
2. Call for help early – it takes several minutes to apply the pressure immobilisation bandage, so ideally these things are done in parallel rather than series.
3. Know how to get your coordinates from your smart phone. Several free apps are available.
On an Apple iPhone, they are displayed on the ‘Compass’ app but ONLY if you have enabled location services (Settings->Privacy->Location Services->Compass)
location services compass-10
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Learn more about pressure immobilisation technique and its indications from the Australian Resuscitation Council

London Trauma Conference Day 3


Dr Louisa Chan reports on Day 3 of the London Trauma Conference
There was a jam-packed line up for the Pre-hospital and Air Ambulance Day which was Co-hosted by the Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation.
 

My highlights were:

HEMS

Dr Rasmus Hesselfeldt works in Denmark where they have a pretty good EMS system with ambulances, RRV’s and PHC doctors. Road conditions are good with the longest travel distance of 114 miles. So would the introduction of a HEMS service improve outcomes? He did an observational study looking at year of data post-trial and compared this with 5 months pre-trial. Trauma patients with ISS > 15 and medical emergencies greater than 30 min by road to the Trauma Centre (TC). Primary endpoint was time to TC, secondary outcomes were number of secondary transfers and 30 day mortality.
Results: Increase in on scene time 20 min vs 28 min, time to hospital increased but time to TC was less – 218 min vs 90 min, reduced mortality, increased direct transfer to TC and fewer secondary transfers.
Full article here: A helicopter emergency medical service may allow faster access to highly specialised care. Dan Med J. 2013 Jul;60(7):A4647
 
Airway
Prof Dan Davis ran through pre-hospital intubation. It seems that this man has spent his life trying to perfect airway management. Peter Rosen was his mentor and imprinted on him that RSI is the cornerstone of airway management.
So surely pre-hospital intubation saves lives. The evidence however begs to differ, or does it? As with all evidence we need to consider the validity of the results and luckily Prof Davis has spent a lot of time thinking through the reasons why there no evidence.
During his research he opened a huge can of worms:
1. Hyperventilation was common – any EtCO2 <30mmHg lead to a doubling in mortality.
2. First pass intubation is great, but not if you let your patient become hypoxic or hypotension or worse still both!
3. Hospital practice had similar issues.
So really the RSI processes he was looking at weren’t great.
The good news is that things have improved and he can now boast higher first pass rates and lower complication rates for his EMS system. His puts this success down to training.
 
 
AIRPORT-LTCThe AIRPORT study was discussed at last years LTC. This year we have the results. 21 HEMS services in 6 countries were involved in the data collection including GSA HEMS. The headline findings are that intubation success rates are high (98%) with a complication rate of 10-12%. The more difficult airways were seen in the non-trauma group. 28.2% patients died (mainly cardiac arrest).
 
 
Matt Thomas reported on REVIVE – a pre-hospital feasibility study looking at airway management in OHCA (I-Gel vs LMA Supreme vs standard care). It was never powered to show a difference in these groups, the main aim was to see if research in this very challenging area was possible. And the answer is YES. The paramedics involved recruited more patients than expected and stuck to the protocol (prob better that docs would have!). A randomised controlled trial to look at the I-Gel vs ETT is planned.
 
(P)REBOA
ReboaLTCFinally, Pre-hospital Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta (REBOA) seems eminently possible – Dr Nils Petter Oveland showed us the training manikin they developed for training. Through training on this manikin they achieved an average skin to balloon time of 3.3mins. Animal data supports this procedure as a bridge to definitive care in non compressible haemorrhage.
London HEMS will be starting (P)REBOA in the New Year.
So now it’s stand up science, I’m off for my glass of wine…………….
Check out what they’re saying about the London Trauma Conference on Twitter

London Trauma Conference Day 2

London Trauma Conference 2013 – Day 2  by Dr Louisa Chan
So I find myself torn today: do I join the the main track with a Major incident theme or the Cardiac Masterclass? I never liked the thought of missing out on anything so I went to a bit of both.
 
Cardiac Masterclass
A lot of people probably think that managing cardiac arrest isn’t challenging and a bit dull because the patient is dead. But the Cardiac Masterclass would inspire you to think of a bright future for cardiac arrest management.
Mark Whitbread reminded us of how important dispatch is in the chain of survival. How much focus do we put on improving bystander CPR rates? Dispatcher assisted CPR has been shown to improve outcomes and needs to be skilfully done.
Ajay Jain pushes for all OHCA patients to be taken to a Cardiac Arrest centre for PCI. Why? Because the results he has from his centre for PCI in OHCA patients results in 77% (101/132) patients surviving to hosp discharge, 65% neurologically intact.
He also tells us that the ECG post arrest is a very poor predictor of PCI findings (although STEMI predicts a positive result) so they all should have PCI.
Lyon-survivors
 
More data from TOPCAT shows us that non survivors of OHCA are easy to cool.
 
LTC-mice
 
 
And maybe we should be cooling DURING cardiac arrest to minimise the reperfusion injury.
 
 
For persistent VF Prof Redwood says revascularisation is the key; when that doesn’t work then reducing LV volume may help so aspiration or an Impella may work. Failing that – ECMO.
 
Major Incidents
Major Incidents by their nature do not happen every day, so experience in these incidents is limited. The challenge then is how can we learn from incidents?
A standardised reporting system for a major incident database would be a good idea – www.majorincidentreporting.org – is where you will find the standard report form and open access database.
And then all I can suggest is that you need to come to the LTC and listen to the accounts of those who have been there. We heard about the Tokyo Sarin attack, Mumbai, and a very compelling story of multiple drownings from Steen Barnung.
Lessons from Tokyo – Sarin attack:

It will happen again
It will be chaos
Crowds cannot be controlled
Comms will fail
Clinical diagnosis – need a senior clinician
Treatment must be immediately available – 3min to absorb sarin
Decontamination – get naked, 90% decon with clothes removal.
Stream casualties
Empower the man on the ground.

 
Gadgets
LTC-MSUThe great thing about the London Trauma Conference is that it’s not just about the content of the tracks, there’s the networking and the opportunity to see new pieces of equipment.
The Norwegians won on the equipment front with their Mobile Stroke Unit. It’s due to go on line in 2014.
So TTFN and more from me on Day 3 of #LTC2013

London Trauma Conference 2013

FDIA_ImageOur inside reporter Dr Louisa Chan provides an update from Day One of the London Trauma Conference:
At risk of sounding like a resuscisaurus, last year was my first foray into the world of blogging. I’m proud to say that the genetic make up of most emergency physicians allows us to adapt so that others do not die! And so here I am again, making my way into the big smoke to report on the great developments of 2013.
I’ve struggled in the past to prise myself away from the main trauma track, it is after all the London Trauma Conference, which has left me curious as to the content of the Cardiac arrest symposium, this year it has been integrated, so I finally get to scratch that itch.
 
Prehospital Cardiac Arrest Management in Scotland
The conference was kicked off by Richard Lyon‘s inspirational description of his TOPCAT study.
In Scotland, of 50 cardiac arrests, 6 will survive to hospital and only 1 will survive to hospital discharge. The survival to hospital discharge in the UK is getting worse (4.8% 1995- 0.7% 2007)
Spurred on by these dreadful figures and a personal quest to improve cardiac arrest care (his father succumbed to a cardiac arrest in his forties)
All in all he has studied 400 cardiac arrest patients pre hospital. So what has he learnt?

  • Precise application of the chain of survival to your own system is vital in the delivery of Quality CPR.
  • He started in the ambulance control room analysing calls (CPR starts at step 11 so more experienced dispatchers skip thee quicker) and worked his way through the chain of survival.
  • The TOPCAT study revealed a 3 min delay to compressions where early intubation and cannulation were performed. Through an education program delivering knowledge and skills with individualised feedback they were able to increase on-chest time.
  • LEADERSHIP was a big factor. Having a clinician dedicated to managing the team improved on chest time and is now delivered by paramedics manning a car response in Edinburgh.
  • Breaks in CPR during movement are overcome by a mechanical chest compression device on carry sheet.
  • Non technical skills are monitored by camera feed
  • These changes have led to a survival to hospital discharge rate of 38% for patients in VF
  • This could translate into an extra 300 lives saved in Scotland when these changes are rolled out nationally.
  • And now there is a move to transport patients who are in VF after the third shock then straight to cath lab.

 
Echocardiography in cardiac arrest
Prof Tim Harris spoke about his passion – echocardiography in resuscitation. If you were in any doubt before then you would leave convinced.
Of course echo should not interfere with CPR so it should be done during the rhythm check with a 10 sec count down.
He covered the usual uses; PEA vs EMD in prognostication (92% sensitivity and 82% specificity to ROSC), Circulation assessment and an estimation of EF (Normal function – anterior mitral valve leaflet hits the septum or is within 5mm , EF 30-45% between 5mm- 18mm and >18mm ant mitral valve leaflets – 30% EF)
 
Cardiogenic shock after cardiac arrest
Professor Deakin: optimising cardiac function after ROSC revolves around the three elements of preload, SVR and myocardial contractility. For those who can still remember how, he recommends preload should be optimised to a LA pressure 15-20mmHg (2-12 normal) with a Swan Ganz catheter.
SVR and contractility can be manipulated thereafter using traditional vasopressors and inotropes or more novel agents like Levosimendan.
Mechanical devices such as IABP, Impella, TandemSupport are useful if available.
Where does the future lie? Perhaps synchronised pacing, hypothermia, extrathoracic ventilation and gene therapy.
LTC-BrohiOpen chest cardiac massage
Prof Karim Brohi: external chest compressions have been around since the 1960′s. Without a doubt external compressions generate a cardiac output, but is this the best way?
Over the last 10 years the priorities in traumatic cardiac arrest have changed – chest compressions are not instituted until after reversible causes have been addressed.
In non traumatic arrest how could we improve?
In canine models coronary perfusion pressure is five times better with internal cardiac massage, providing better survival rates with intact neurology.
There are a few human studies showing marked differences in cardiac index: 1.31 in the open group vs 0.61 in the closed group. In a Japanese study (1993), ROSC was achieved in 58% in open vs 1% closed.
The technique is two handed and the same as that taught in thoracotomy training. The difference is that in medical cardiac arrest you can use a smaller incision ( left lateral).
Who should we use open cardiac massage on? Perhaps in tamponade and pulmonary embolism?
How about when? When 10-15min with “standard care” has failed?
Perhaps it is time for a trial?
Post cardiac arrest syndrome and neuro protective measures
Prof Simon Redwood and Matt Thomas had overlapping talks on this . The bottom line is don’t have too much or too little CO2 or O2. The therapeutic hypothermia debate continues, what is evident is that there should be temperature control to avoid hyperthermia but what temperature? And there may be other benefits to hypothermia eg. limitation of infarct size.
What has been evident from all the speakers today is that it is an integrated system that saves lives and in order to guide the development of your system you need data and the belief that you can improve cardiac arrest outcomes.
More from me tomorrow!
Louisa Chan

Guidelines on prehospital drug-assisted LMA insertion

The UK’s Faculty of Prehospital Care has published a number of consensus guidelines in this month’s EMJ
Dr Minh Le Cong‘s PHARM blog has summaries of three of them:

The final one is the most contentious: Pharmacologically assisted laryngeal mask insertion: a consensus statement(1). Here is the summary:

  1. The PALM technique is an acceptable tool for managing the prehospital airway
  2. The PALM technique is indicated in a rare set of circumstances
  3. The PALM procedure is a rescue technique
  4. The PALM procedure should be checklist driven
  5. At least a second generation SAD should be used
  6. End-tidal CO2 monitoring is mandatory
  7. No preference is expressed for any particular drug
  8. No preference is expressed for any particular dosing regime
  9. Flumazenil is highly unlikely to have a role in managing the PALM patient
  10. The PALM procedure should only be carried out by practitioners of level 7 or above competences
  11. The availability of a trained assistant, familiar with the procedure would be advantageous
  12. The training required to achieve competency in performing the PALM procedure must include in-hospital insertion of SADs, simulation training and training in the transfer of critically ill patients
  13. Data should be collected and collated at a national level for all patients who receive the PALM procedure

They qualify the first point with the statement: The consensus group felt that, in the hands of a specific set of practitioners and in certain circumstances, patients would benefit from the technique. It was recognised that pre-hospital airway management can be very challenging, and deeming the technique unacceptable could deprive patients of a potentially life saving intervention. It was felt that having another tool available to clinicians which could potentially improve patient outcome was important. This was despite the lack of a robust evidence base. It was felt that the technique is indicated in, and should be limited to, a very specific set of circumstances as described below
The publication lists some ‘Organisations represented at the consensus meeting’, which include some commercial training and equipment companies.
It also states that ‘The Royal College of Anaesthetists, although represented at the initial meeting, was unable to support the outcomes agreed by the other represented organisations.
This is a very interesting development. I can see the pros and cons of this. Since practitioners are out there doing PALM anyway, it is in the interests of patients to produce a statement that encourages monitoring, checklists, training, and data collection. To meet all the requirements, one must undergo ‘training in the transfer of critically ill patients’, which would normally necessitate more advanced airway and anaesthesia skills anyway.
A tough one – what would you want if there was no RSI capability but you were hypoxic with trismus and basic airway maneouvres were failing? An all out ban on PALM, or PALM provided by someone trained in surgical airway if it fails (as per the consensus recommendations)?
This and some of the other statements can be downloaded in full at the Faculty of Pre-hospital Care site
1. Pharmacologically assisted laryngeal mask insertion: a consensus statement
Emerg Med J. 2013 Dec;30(12):1073-5

Prehospital ECLS – it's happening

Patients with refractory (>30 mins) cardiac arrest underwent prehospital cannulation for extracorporeal life support in a French feasibility study. A physician-paramedic team responded by car in Paris to cardiac arrest cases that met inclusion criteria. Mechanical CPR devices (Autopulse or LUCAS) were applied during cannulation. Femoral venoarterial ECMO was instituted using a Maquet Cardiohelp system. Blood products and inotropes, echocardiography, and hypothermia were included in the prehospital management package.
Seven patients were treated, with a mean age of 42 (+/- SD of 16, no median given). ECLS was started an average 57 min (±21) after the onset of ACLS. One patient survived to discharge neurologically intact. Two brain dead patients became organ donors. The survivor had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with refractory ventricular fibrillation.
Safety and feasibility of prehospital extra corporeal life support implementation by non-surgeons for out-of-hospital refractory cardiac arrest
Resuscitation. 2013 Nov;84(11):1525-9
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BACKGROUND: Extra corporeal life support (ECLS) has been recently introduced in the treatment of refractory cardiac arrest (CA). Several studies have assessed the use of ECLS in refractory CA once the patients reach hospital. The time between CA and the implementation of ECLS is a major prognostic factor for survival. The main predictive factor for survival is ECLS access time. Pre hospital ECLS implementation could reduce access time. We therefore decided to assess the feasibility and safety of prehospital ECLS implementation (PH-ECLS) in a pilot study.

METHODS AND RESULTS: From January 2011 to January 2012, PH-ECLS implementation for refractory CA was performed in 7 patients by a PH-ECLS team including emergency and/or intensivist physicians and paramedics. Patients were included prospectively and consecutively if the following criteria were met: they had a witnessed CA; CPR was initiated within the first 5min of CA and/or there were signs of life during CPR; an PH-ECLS team was available and absence of severe comorbidities. ECLS flow was established in all patients. ECLS was started 22min (±6) after the incision, and 57min (±21) after the onset of advanced cardiovascular life support (ACLS). In one patient, ECLS was stopped for 10min due to an accidental decannulation. One patient survived without sequelae. Three patients developed brain death.

CONCLUSIONS: This pilot study suggests that PH-ECLS performed by non-surgeons is safe and feasible. Further studies are needed to confirm the time saved by this strategy and its potential effect on survival.

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