Unusual Cardiac Arrest and Questions

You were using an AED
my question is--were you in a house that was on blocks or on a concrete slab? Reason being, I once had an extremely dead patient on AED that would advise shock whenever one us walked near the body. The house was on blocks and we could feel the floor vibrate when someone walked on it.
 
So you preach "Treat the patient, not the machine" but refuse to actually see where you could have put it into practice.

Lividity means a dead patient. You need to use your brain and not send the bystanders on a dramatic emotional roller coaster.
 
We're required to work and txp LVAD pts who present with lividity, sans cx compressions, as always.
 
lex said:
Are there any other injuries/situations that could clearly be considered "incompatible with life?"
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For the traumatic arrest, if asystole u/a, and no signs of life, we can call it w/o working them. If they had a sz, a syncopal episode, or whatever, and then had the traumatic event (we would know by a witness's account), then that may be different.
 
abckidsmom said:
Agreed. There's an ACLS algorithm for everything, including asystole. If I believe the patient is dead, I'm not hooking them up to anything. If I hook them up and the patient's in asystole, how does that help me? It doesn't, because then I have to justify (whether to myself or my QA supervisor) why I decided not to follow the protocol.

Dead is dead, and you can identify dead without the montior.

A young, strong heart will keep beating for a long time. A friend of mine went for a decapitation once, where a motorcylist laid his bike down and then slid under the guardrail. The helmet stopped his head, but his body kept going. The crew arrived in under 5 minutes from the time of the wreck and there were still heart tones. Faint, muffled ones, but they were still there.
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We're required to obtain a 12 lead on any field pronouncement. This blanket policy is in place, I suppose, to discourage skell medics from pronouncing right away and reasoning that the pt will have lividity by the time the coroner gets there.
 
we just learned about asystole and v-fib last night in my ekg class!

could it be a possibility that the AED or what you saw was very fine v-fib? almost to the point of asystole?

example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ivqrcQ1xI

or could it have been Asystole with P waves?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLQkBVe4_hs

or possibly could have been a stretch of agonal rhythms?

heres a great video on the progression of the EKG waves from the start of a STEMI till Asytole

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV11kplLoxw&feature=related
 
People need to stop transporting corpses and realize dead is dead.

No point in giving family false hope. Id rather say sorry for you loss, than look in my rear view mirror and see the family blowing stoplights behind me hoping to see grandpa talk again one more time.

Just my opinion. And yes I would do the same thing if it was family.

Save the viable, let the others go is how I see it. Cant save everybody
 
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