TFD purchases CPR device with grant
Tuscumbia Fire Department has a new piece of equipment that will really get the heart pumping. Quite literally, in fact.
TFD recently purchased a LUCAS device to aid in patient care. The equipment is designed to deliver mechanical chest compressions to those in cardiac arrest.
“It’s got a backboard with it. You put that under the patient, and the LUCAS attaches to the backboard,” said TFD Fire Chief J.T. Fox. “It provides very good quality CPR and frees up the guys to be able to use an AED (automated external defibrillator), provide oxygen, etc.”
LUCAS stands for Lund University Cardiopulmonary Assist System. Lund University is in Sweden, where the LUCAS was originally researched and tested.
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, is used when someone’s heart has stopped beating in order to keep blood flowing and oxygenate a patient’s vital organs.
CPR, introduced in 1960, involves using chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth breathing.
Not only does the LUCAS device free up a first responder to provide aid in other ways, it maintains a constant rhythm and pressure, something much easier for a machine to do than a person.
“When you have a human providing CPR, you’re going to have human error. When the machine does it, there is no error,” Fox said.
The LUCAS device is something Fox said Tuscumbia Fire has needed for a long time but was hard to put on the department’s budget given the $14,000 price tag.
“We have been needing one of these for years and finally got our hands on one,” Fox said. “It’s an expensive piece of equipment, so it’s hard to make it a budgetary item. We are very thankful for the County Commission and state representatives for providing us with this grant. This equipment will be very beneficial for the community. We were blessed to get it.”
It did not take long after receiving the item for the LUCAS to prove its worth to TFD.
“Less than 30 hours after we put it in service, we were using it,” Fox said. “I don’t know the outcome yet, but when we transferred care to Keller (Hospital) the patient was alive. The patient did have a rhythm back.”
