I had a very similar incident on a Lufthansa flight from Munich to Chicago. We had been at cruising altitude for about 30 minutes when the flight attendant came back and tapped me on the shoulder (I was wearing a coat with a EMS patch on it when I got on the plane and apparently she remembered seeing the patch). "Are you a paramedic?". "No, I'm an Intermediate EMT. Do you need something?" "Yes, can you come look at another passenger? He doesn't look well at all." I agreed and followed her to the back of the plane. We were about 10 rows away when I notice this guy who is pale, sweaty, and gray. Apparently he was having 6/10 chest pain, breathing difficulty and felt like his heart was racing. I asked the flight attendant to page for any other medical personnel and to get me the AED, O2 and medical bag. I checked the guy's vitals where were something along the lines of HR 194, BP 86/52, RR 36 and labored, breath sounds were rales and rhonchi 1/3 of the way up the lungs.
:blink:
They get me the O2, and it also only went to 4 L (
) but I figured that that is better than nothing. I put the AED on him, just for a check of his rhythm and guess what I found: V-Tach. I would have just cardioverted him, but I couldn't figure out how to get the AED into manual mode. So I started setting up for an IV when I hear someone walk up behind me. Come to find out the guy was an Austrian dentist who spoke minimal English (and I at the time spoke minimal German) so he was going to be of little help. They also got a doctor on the phone (I think he was English judging by the accent), but I'm not sure and I basically asked if I could follow ACLS guidelines medication wise in treating this guy and the doctor stated I could.) I told the flight attendant that I needed to speak to the crew because this guy needed a hospital ASAP. She scurried off and I went back to starting the IV. TY I got the IV established and gave 100 mg lidocaine to try to control the VT. Luckily, it slowed the VT a little and he would have moments where he would go into what looked a sinus rhythm with multifocal PVC's so I gave another 50 of lido and started to set up for a lidocaine drip when the second officer came back and he asked how bad it was. My response was "Bad. How quickly can we get on the ground?" He goes "The closest airport at the moment is Keflavik Iceland." My response was "I don't care. He needs a hospital, and he needs it now." He acknowledged that he agreed with me and proceeded back to the cockpit.
The rest of the flight went as uneventfully as could be expected when you are stuck on a plane with an unstable cardiac patient and only an effectively non-Anglophonic Austrian dentist as your partner (basically the patient got no better but no worse). But the real fun started once we got on the ground in Iceland. The medics came on board to get the patient and they looked at me after I reported what I had done and go "Are you a doctor?" "No." "Please come with us." So I get off the plane and find myself being questioned by a couple of very grumpy Icelandic cops. Apparently the medics thought I violated some sort of rule by giving the lidocaine (they didn't seem to grasp that I had been talking to a doc prior to doing it). Needless to say I wound up being questioned for the better part of two hours- during which time my flight left :angry: - until they got in touch with the medical control doc that Lufthansa. So I was a little pissed when the cops told me that I was free to go. I had no idea how I was going to get home. So I walk to the information desk and the lady made a phone call and then two IcelandAir employees came up to me and proceeded to explain that they were terribly sorry for my inconvenience and that Lufthansa had arranged for me to catch a flight to Frankfurt on board an IcelandAir plane that was leaving in a few minutes. So I was hustled aboard that aircraft and went back to Frankfurt where I was put aboard a Lufthansa aircraft bound for Chicago. The nice thing was I got upgraded to first class on board both those flights. I also received a letter from Lufthansa a few days later thanking me for my assistance and apologizing again for any inconvenience and letting me know that the man lived. All in all it wasn't a bad experience and I would have to say I would not hesitate to offer assistance again.
So I have to say by far if you have to help out on board an overseas flight, two things: Try to do it aboard a Lufthansa flight and don't agree to a divert to Iceland. :lol:
I would have been so irrate that I would have been arrested.
:lol:
