Zoll AutoPulse

clibb

Forum Captain
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Our supervisors have them and respond to all Delta and Echo calls.
These are awesome and have saved a couple lives. You can actually get a BP while this is going. It's insane.
 

Aidey

Community Leader Emeritus
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Yeah. One of our local hospitals bought one recently, and we used it on an arrest we transported. I've also played with them a bit at symposiums and such. I agree that they aren't really cost effective. I don't see my service ever getting them because the only justification I can see being effective is the safety route. They increase safety because no one has to be standing doing CPR in the back. However, that can be debunked by someone arguing we shouldn't be doing CPR in the back nearly as often as we do.
 

jjesusfreak01

Forum Deputy Chief
1,344
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You get ROSC on scene and lose it in the back of the truck a lot, or are these mostly patients who initially code in the back of your truck?
 

Simusid

Forum Captain
336
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We had two Zoll AutoPulse for about 4 years. They were good and worked fine. The bands are kind of expensive at $120+ and the batteries seemed to have a short lifespan (though I think that might have been fixed).

We just replaced both of ours for the Lucas Thumper which is lighter and allegedly has a higher perfusion because the compliant cup on the chest actually pulls the chest upward on the return stroke. If you believe the marketing, that negative pressure is apparently clinically significant.
 

Aidey

Community Leader Emeritus
4,800
11
38
We just replaced both of ours for the Lucas Thumper which is lighter and allegedly has a higher perfusion because the compliant cup on the chest actually pulls the chest upward on the return stroke. If you believe the marketing, that negative pressure is apparently clinically significant.

Lucas is what our hospital just got rid of. I don't know if they had the most current model or not, but they HATED it. I only saw it used once or twice, the rest of the time people preferred to just do the CPR manually.
 

wyoskibum

Forum Captain
363
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My service has them. We call them the "geezer squeezers". Sure beats swapping out compressors every two minutes!
 

WolfmanHarris

Forum Asst. Chief
802
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My service recently chose the Lucas II. It's not clear at the moment whether they'll be placed on all vehicles or just our PRU's for now. Since poor compressions are the biggest point for failure in an arrest it only makes sense to get machine perfect compressions 100% of the time.

Also having it fits well with the current trend in my area of decreasing FD response to medical calls. We've already adjusted the dispatch rules for tiered response to cut way back on unnecessary FD response (anecdotally about 50% less, the official numbers are a ways off still). Some areas have started sending two Ambulances to all VSA's (at least one ACP) as part of transitioning to a zero FD response to medical calls.
 
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