Orlando Fire Dept. to purchase more automatic CPR devices

Orlando firefighters lifted the accordion-like straps of the Zoll AutoPulse Compression Device and watched them tighten to a mannequin’s chest as Lt. Robert Anctil pressed a button on the end of the stabilizing board. Once fitted, it began the steady squeeze of CPR.

The device, which firefighters demonstrated at their downtown station in August, helped the agency gain EMS accreditation that month for patient care and ambulance service delivery.

On Monday, Orlando City Council members approved a grant that will help the Fire Department purchase 10 more.

The Florida Department of Health’s EMS Matching Grant will award $123,747.75 toward the equipment. As part of the grant agreement, the Orlando Fire Department will shell out about $40,000 of its own money, roughly 25 percent of the funds granted by the FDOH, to bring the total to about $165,000.

The equipment was first purchased by the agency in April 2017, promising to boost the survival rate of cardiac arrest patients by allowing first responders to “be able to more effectively move patients down stairwells and in elevators, around corners and in confined spaces while reducing interruption of high-quality CPR,” OFD spokeswoman Ashley Papagni said in a press release.

Of the 434 patients who were administered CPR since then, the AutoPulse was used on 108 of them. Thirty of those people— 28 percent — were resuscitated, according data provided by the agency. The remaining 326 patients were treated with hands-only CPR and 71 people — 22 percent — regained a pulse.

In the year-plus prior to OFD purchasing the devices, patients treated with handsonly CPR survived at a rate at or just below those resuscitated using the AutoPulse since it was implemented.

In 2016, 61 of 221 patients, or 28 percent, regained a pulse after being administered traditional CPR. In the following four months, between Jan. 1 and April 30 of 2017, 22 of the 86 people who received CPR— 26 percent— were resuscitated.

The equipment helps first responders by providing “a system where they can maintain consistent, effective, uninterrupted CPR” while en route to a hospital, Papagni said, which helps fulfill some the agency’s EMS goals that are laid out in its strategic plan.

The Fire Department already met one of its 2018 objectives by securing the grant for chest compression devices and another when it was awarded accreditation from the Commission on Ambulance Accreditation Services in August.

The independent review board evaluated the agency’s patient care during medical transports, taking into consideration more than 100 processes, including new technology like the AutoPulse.

Administering quick and effective CPR can mean life or death for a patient in cardiac arrest, Papagni said.

“According to the American Heart Association, for every one minute that goes by, you lose 10 percent of your survivability,” she said, adding that when it comes to getting oxygen “to your brain and other vital organs, time is of the essence.”