EMS Enlisted in ECC Research

Finally, this week’s last news item is an article about EMS agencies that are being used to continue to guide the research understanding we have of our resuscitation methods in the field with regard to cardiac arrest and cardiac emergencies. This is just part of that ongoing process. The 2010 guidelines didn’t come out that long ago and we just started implementing some of that stuff this year, why are we thinking about the next thing?

These guidelines come out every five years for a reason. They come every five years because ongoing research helps us to define and modify our understanding of what improves our patient outcomes. The National Institutes of Health have partnered with several EMS agencies in order to have them provide data and information back regarding their cardiac arrest patients. Provide them data on what is working what isn’t working.

Which Agencies Suitable for Research?

To do this you need an agency that has got their hands well into the current Emergency Cardiac Care guidelines. Agencies will used that have progressive protocols that are going to allow them to see what’s going on with regard to our current guidelines. Agencies that are employing therapeutic hypothermia and interventions like that. Agencies managing the patients appropriately recognizing who is actually dead and who is viable to be resuscitated. All those things are part of the 2010 guidelines that need to be in place and firmly understood by the providers in the agency before researchers can go ahead and have them participate in a study.

It’s exciting following up on this these studies as they get released over time. The data is brought together in research and we’re going to see, I think, some interesting things coming along as we start to look forward to the 2015 guidelines.

New ECC Guidelines On the Way

Some of you are probably groaning as I mention the next round of updates already, but really it’s exciting. We’re in a time where we’re seeing some major, positive change in a way we haven’t seen in the previous 20 years in our resuscitation rates.

That means that we can really refine and make changes to help move along survival rates in our community, so I hope that you will be as excited as I am. I will keep you up-to-date on what is being reported by these studies so when the new guidelines come out you won’t be as surprised as the guy sitting next to you. All because you listen to the MedicCast.

When the new guidelines came out in 2010, they weren’t really huge surprise to me but I’ve been reading these articles and trying to keep up with what the research was saying. I had some indications of at least the direction that medical research was pointing to.

Improving Cardiac Arrest Survival

I don’t think were likely to see monumental change but these things, these refinements make us closer and closer to that ultimate hundred percent survivability for a witnessed cardiac arrest because of we’ve got AEDs present and we’ve got the most advanced guidelines present and we’ve got a well-trained bystander community. There’s no reason people can’t survive cardiac arrest outside a hospital with a pretty good numbers.

I hope you keep that in mind. There are links to all of this over at the website at MedicCast.com/blog. Also, send in your questions and comments. I welcome them and I hope to hear from you soon. You can send them to me by e-mail at podmedic@Mac.com.

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Catch this news item and more in this week’s episode of the MedicCast – Heat Related Emergencies Revisited and Episode 294.

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