Clemens, North Carolina, is acting as one big guinea pig, a testing ground for a whole new kind of rapid response: drone defibrillators.
It sounds odd. It sounds like a drone with a Taser taped to it. The reality of it is much more practical, even if it is rather sci-fi. Duke University’s Duke Health is testing out drones that air-drop automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, straight to bystanders during a cardiac emergency. It’s being billed as the first study of its kind in the United States.
There’s some logic behind it: even if the fastest an EMS team can get to you, it still has to cut through traffic and a complex web of roads. If the quickest route between two points is a straight line, why not attach a payload of medical emergency equipment onto a drone that can fly directly from a dispatch center to the precise spot of the emergency?
Drone-Delivered Defibrillators Are Being Tested in This Town
Once a 911 call comes in, dispatch fires up a drone, straps on an AED, and sends it off. While the caller gets coached by the operator, the drone beelines to the scene. When it arrives minutes later, it drops in to provide the caller with an AED to try to revive or stabilize the victim while EMS is on the way. It’s not a replacement for an ambulance and the trained medical professionals inside.
Study lead and Duke cardiologist Monique Starks says the drones are expected to reach patients in about 4 minutes, shaving 2 to 3 minutes off traditional EMS arrival times. That’s a lot of time where someone’s life could be decided. Especially with cardiac arrest, where help within 10 minutes can be life or death.
If an AED is used within the first 2 to 5 minutes of a cardiac arrest, a person’s chances of survival shoot up to 70 percent when the current US survival rate sits at a grim 10 percent.
One big hurdle right now is that cardiac arrests mostly happen at home, where AEDs can’t conveniently slip in. On top of that, defibrillators are only used in 1 to 4 percent of cardiac arrest cases.
That’s precisely the stat that Duke wants to boost. It wants to give any bystander the ability to keep a cardiac arrest victim holding on for just long enough until the professionals can take over.
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