This month the Shoreline Fire Department along with several others are placing in-service new “state of the art” Heart monitors and defibrillators.  We were very fortunate to receive 21 Philips MRX Defibrillators at no cost to our community.  Philips Medical has graciously donated new heart monitors to several Fire and EMS agencies in North King County that will allow us to enter into an upcoming “CPR Trial”.  The equipment donated to us totals just under $500,000 that we will not have to pull from our current tax dollars.

A CPR study called ROC

Seattle and King County have for years been known to be the best place in the World to have your heart stop.  Since the early 1970’s King County has led the way in surviving “cardiac arrest” (a condition where your heart stops and if not started almost immediately you will die).  For many years we have been able to bring people back from arrest about 34% of the time, which is way above the national average of 5-10%. 

Later this month Shoreline and the rest of King County will be entering into a study to see if we can do even better.  The ROC (“Resuscitation Outcome Consortium”) study will look at how we do CPR today and how we can potentially do it better tomorrow.  In fact they will be looking at not only us, but also nine other major cities both in the US and Canada.  When we finish we will have completed the most comprehensive look at how bystander CPR, Public Defibrillators, Firefighters and Paramedics all interact and how best to try to bring someone back to life.  It is truly the largest study to ever look at how people are “resuscitated” in the pre-hospital setting.

How will we know???

Our new Philips MRX machines not only provide Heart monitoring and defibrillation they also monitor exactly how we are doing CPR both compressions and breathing.  The MRX then gives us “real time” feedback to allow us to optimize everything we are doing for our patient.  These machines also collect many other data elements even down to the voices of the emergency responders.

This new equipment and the ROC study have the potential to change everything we do for people in their most vulnerable time.  When finished, we believe that not only will we continue to lead the Nation in “Cardiac arrest survival” but also we will have set the standard that other communities in this Country should strive for.

April 4, 2007