3 ms·

You can _try_ using a defibrillator to transcutaneously pace an asystolic heart, but I've never seen that work.

• rdl 13y ago
  I wonder if the next step would be being able to deliver drugs (atropine?) in a more targeted way (maybe tiny doses highly localized and recurring? I'm not sure exactly how it works) along with electrical or manual stimulation. I guess another option might be a rapid way to put someone on heart/lung bypass, either in the field or at least in the ER, rather than only in the OR. Or rapid chilling, or both. I suppose if we either had long-term useful artificial hearts, or a more efficient/effective organ transplant regime, this might be more of an issue.
  • JshWright 13y ago
    Atropine is mostly deprecated in cardiac arrest scenarios nowadays. It's still in-protocol for brady PEAs, but that's about it. Rapid cooling is becoming very widespread in post-ROSC situations (we're spec'ing a chiller box for saline in our next rigs for that very reason), but if they're still dead, cooling them isn't likely to do much for them.
    • rdl 13y ago
      It would be really interesting to see cooling applied to dive medicine (I dive, and a friend of mine is a Canadian Forces MD who did a hyperbaric/dive med fellowship at Duke, so I read some papers on this stuff more than I would otherwise). Also seems like it could be really useful for flight medicine/extended distance transport post ROSC/etc.