Articles: emergency-medicine.
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A two-year study of 198 consecutive patients treated for cardiac arrest in the emergency department at Stanford University Medical Center was undertaken. The relatively poor overall survival rate of 3% and the complexity of deciding how to treat cardiac arrest victims suggest the need for guidelines to assist the emergency physician when resuscitating cardiac arrest patients. From the above study and a survey of the literature, the authors formulated the following guidelines of when resuscitation should be discontinued or not attempted: Cases of apnea and pulselessness known to have exceeded 10 minutes, no response after more than 30 minutes of advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), no ventricular EKG activity after more than 10 minutes of ACLS, and preexisting terminal illness.
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Medical instrumentation · Nov 1977
Case ReportsApplication of portable cardiopulmonary bypass to emergency instrumentation.
Although most emergency conditions may be reversed with standard treatment protocols, mechanical cardiopulmonary bypass may be utilized to resuscitate highly selective patients who are in extremis. The addition of a battery mode to drive the pump oxygenator allows for portability from one area of the hospital to another. With the extensive availability of pump teams for elective heart surgery, cardiopulmonary bypass is applicable to patients with emergency conditions.