We’ve covered Cardiac Arrest management (as in the medical delivery of it) in a previous Roadside to Resusepsiode. Since then we've had some updates with Paramedic-2, Refractory VF, Airways-2 and a whole host of other papers. But what we haven't talked much about is the art of creating the environment, space & workflow to deliver the best medical care possible.
Whilst these might seem like less exciting and important parts of the package, they probably require a greater degree of skill and knowledge than running the medical aspects of the arrest. To do them with excellence you need to anticipate every single objective/obstacle that could stand in your way, including the medical interventions involved and the challenges of that unique case and environment.
In this episode we run through the aspects of a cardiac arrest right from the initiation of the case to the clearing/transfer to onwards care. We talk about the use of immediate, urgent and definitive plans and then run through how these translate into both in-hospital and prehospital arrests.
We personally got a lot out of preparing and thinking about this episode, so we hope you find it useful too!
We’d love to hear any thoughts or feedback on this slightly different style of episode either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!
Simon & James
Welcome back to the podcast and three great papers for May's episode!
First up we take a pretty deep look into refractory VF. This follows on from our our review of DOSE-VF in December '22's papers of the month and our recent Roadside to Resus on the topic. In that we discussed the possibility that many of the cases we see at pulse checks as being refractory VF may actually have had 5 seconds or more, post shock, where they jumped out of VF but then reverted back into it. This paper is a secondary analysis of DOSE-VF and reveals what really happen to these 'refractory VFs' by interrogating the defibrillators. What difference will it make to our strategy for recurrent and refractory VF?
Next up we take a look at elderly patients presenting to the Emergency Department with abdominal pain with an analysis of the features that predict a serious abdominal condition.
Lastly we look at the how different pressures exerted to the facemask when ventilating neonates can make in terms of bradycardia and apnoea.
Once again we’d love to hear any thoughts or feedback either on the website or via X @TheResusRoom!
Simon & Rob