Drones are being tested to deliver AEDs to cardiac arrest emergencies▼

SciTech

Published 46d ago

In the future, drones could deliver defibrillators to cardiac arrest calls before first responders arrive. We had drones, we had defibrillators, there are ambulances, there are dispatch centers, we had all of those components. But we had to get all of that together, said Andreas Claesson, a registered nurse and professor at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. Sweden is one of the first places to develop an AED drone delivery program. Claesson has been a part of the program and subsequent studies since it started in 2014. Over a span of four months a couple years ago, they made 11 deliveries and  published the results in a study. That was the first study to show that it's feasible, he said. SEE MORE: Is there a connection between COVID-19 and cardiac arrest? We are still in the project. We have seven drones now, Claesson said. In cardiac arrest in Sweden, we dispatch two ambulances and one fire truck and, as a complement, a drone. When dispatch gets a call for a possible cardiac arrest, the drone gets an automated alert. The drone then boots up and the pilot is notified. The delivery is mostly autonomous, based on the coordinates received by the dispatch center. The drone is airborne at the same time as the ambulance leaves the garage, Claesson said. The drone flies to the site, drops to 30 meters and lowers the AED. Early defibrillation is known to increase survival heavily. If we are able to deliver an AED and use it within three to five minutes of a cardiac arrest, 50% could survive, Claesson said. Studies show out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates in adults sit at about 10%. Survival is pretty poor and has changed somewhat, but not a lot, in the past 30 years, said Dr. Monique Starks, a cardiologist and associate professor of medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine. Starks is in the beginning stages of working on a similar program in North Carolina. We determined that we could move the arrival times from about 8 to 10 minutes down to about 5 minutes, she said, comparing the arrival times of first responders and AED-delivering drones. Source