Getting Medical Care to Patients Faster with Drones

The Research Claesson A, Fredman D, Svensson L, et al. Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) in out-of- hospital-cardiac-arrest. Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med. 2016;24(1):124. The Science To explore the potential role of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly known as drones, to deliver an automated external defibrillator (AED) to the scene of a cardiac arrest, the authors examined the global positioning system coordinates of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Stockholm County in Sweden. Geographical models were developed for the urban and rural areas, and test flights with an AED equipped drone were conducted over the rural areas. Over a seven-year period (2006-2013), there were 3,165 cardiac arrests. Twenty sites were identified as being suitable for deploying a drone. When compared to the EMS response time, the urban model indicated the drone would have beat the ambulance to the scene 32% of the time by an average of 1.5 minutes. In the rural model, the drone arrived before EMS in 93% of the cases by an average of 19 minutes. During the test flights, the researchers determined that dropping the AED from nine to 12 feet or landing the drone was safer than delivering the AED by parachute. Medic Wesley Comments I can see a boon of EMS cartoons being born from this study. "It's all fun and games till the defib dropped on the rescuer's head." Realistically, this is an idea that will need a great deal of research to implement. Currently, pilots of licensed aircraft are...
Source: JEMS Patient Care - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Patient Care Columns Cardiac & Resuscitation Source Type: news