DeFibrillate at the scene, CPR to the hospital, hospitals have doctors
AppyPappy said: “DeFibrillate at the scene, CPR to the hospital, hospitals have doctors.”
I’m a volunteer Firefighter/EMT for about 15 years, semi-rural area. I haven’t seen everything but I’ve seem some things.
I have personally performed CPR on about 40 patients. None of them have survived past 24 hours.
One patient in particular stands out. A male in his mid 30s, father of 3 kids, struck by lightning while swimming in a lake, witnessed by family. I live literally right around the corner from the lake and went directly to the scene, was there in less than 5 minutes. The park rangers were performing chest compressions and had an AED hooked up, I set up a bag with O2 and airway. This patient had nothing, zip, nothing.
The paramedics arrived within 2 minutes of my arrival. They hooked up a 4 lead and IV started pushing. Myself and another did compressions, the patient was tubed and we did compressions in a moving truck for the 15 minute ride to the ER. So I personally did about 25 minutes of chest thumps to the point that the next day I was sore.
At the ER of course the staff took over. There was as I said nothing going on but the ER staff got a rhythm of sorts and kept at it BECAUSE the guy was young and had kids.
I waited in the ED for about another 15 minutes when it became apparent that the staff there was running out of energy so me and another firefighter took turns doing CPR in the emergency room. They were successful in getting a rhythm of sorts but this is due to the drugs but the guy had no chance.
He was flown to a level 1 facility where they pulled the plug about 5 hours later. I would estimate that the cost total was about $80,000.00 basically for nothing.