Gary Passama

Gary Passama retired as president and CEO of NorthBay Healthcare on March 31, 2017. An active blogger since 2010, here’s a collection of his work.

LUCAS

October 25, 2016
 

Talk about disruption in the provision of health care. Now it is Boy Scouts being supplanted by medical technology.

I well remember as a Scout learning how to do what we then called mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to revive someone who had drowned or whose heart and breathing had stopped. “Be prepared” was the motto and I was prepared.  I later relearned the technique during a short stint I did as a nurse’s aide when I was in college. Thankfully, I never had to apply what I learned.

You may remember the technique. You would cover the patient’s mouth with your mouth after first making sure there was nothing in the mouth to hinder access and breathe in. That would alternate with someone compressing the chest. It could be a strenuous procedure and the results were linked to the effectiveness of the person doing the resuscitation.

A few years ago it was determined that just doing chest compressions was as effective as the mouth-to-mouth technique. So now even medical professionals only do chest compressions in such situations, hopefully correctly, and without breaking ribs in the process.

Until last week I thought that was the state of the art in resuscitation. Then I discovered LUCAS at the nursing skills fair at our Green Valley Conference Center. Every year our nurses and other patient care providers must demonstrate their competency in a variety of areas.  As I wandered around I noticed one of the rooms with a sign that said simply, “LUCAS.”  

Who was LUCAS and why did he spell his name in all caps?

LUCAS turned out to be a chestLUCAS is a chest compression system. compression system which automates and improves upon the resuscitation technique. Here’s a photo of what it looks like:

You wrap it around the patient. It uses sensors to deliver a customized level of chest compression to the patient who is not breathing. Look ma, no hands!

That is about as technical as I am going to get in my description. Trust me when I say the results are better than the method I learned.

To see a video of the device in action, click here.

I have been told LUCAS has been in use for several years in ambulances and on fire rescue trucks. Because of its demonstrated effectiveness in patients who are not breathing it is now finding its way into emergency rooms and intensive care units in conjunction with cardiac defibrillators.Nurse Jennie Courtemanche demonstrates LUCAS during a recent nursing skills fair at NorthBay Thus, the need to make sure our staff was proficient in its use.

Unlike portable cardiac defibrillators, which are now found in many public places and can be used by non-medical people when someone’s heart has stopped, LUCAS reportedly is not yet ready for such public deployment. That could come when further development of the technology simplifies its use.

Most fascinating about LUCAS is that it is another example of a nascent technology which is likely to allow non-medical people to do things that previously were done only by highly trained medical professionals in hospitals.

It is sneaking up on us. Today it is the Boy Scouts who have been replaced. What does it mean to those of us in health care tomorrow?

 

Tags: gary passama, healthcare insider

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