Performing CPR involves pressing down on the chest of someone in cardiac arrest 100 to 120 times per minute.
It can be exhausting, as well as unnerving.
That explains why some local Emergency Medical Services agencies have automatic CPR devices that perform the chest compressions.
“The main thing about it is it’s consistent, and it doesn’t get tired,” said Tom Barsi, education manager for Orchard Park Fire District EMS.
It also helps calm a chaotic scene, frees up EMS personnel to undertake other treatments on the patient and is safer for paramedics in the ambulance, since they don’t have to stand over a patient to perform Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and can be belted in a seat during transport.
The portable LUCAS 3 device has a plate that is placed under the patient’s back with the compression unit above the chest.
“If somebody is doing manual CPR and they’re pushing on someone’s chest with their hands, they can do it for a period of time,” Barsi said. “You need to perform 100-120 compressions a minute. You can do it for a little bit, but you get tired.”
The device also is helpful when moving a patient from a house to an ambulance, which could involve going around corners and down stairs.
“There were periods of time you just had to stop,” Barsi said.
More than 435,000 Americans die from a cardiac arrest, which globally claims more lives than colorectal, breast and prostate cancer, influenza, pneumonia, auto accidents, HIV, firearms and house fires combined, according to the American Heart Association.
Nearly 90% of American deaths occur in the home, the association reports, and up to 200,000 lives of adults and children could be saved each year if CPR were performed early enough.
A Norwegian paramedic approached a professor at Lund University Hospital in Sweden in the 1990s with the idea of an automatic chest compression machine. LUCAS stands for Lund University Cardiac Assist System.
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