New York City Ambulances to Treat Cardiac Patients with Hypothermia
The City of New York has implemented new procedures for the in-ambulance treatment of heart attack victims. The procedure, known as therapeutic hypothermia, lowers the patients body temperature to about 90 degrees by administering cold intravenous fluids immediately after a heart attack. On January 1, 2009, the Fire Department of the City of New York announced that they would begin to take certain heart attacks patients to hospitals that performed therapeutic hypothermia.
When a patient suffers cardiac arrest, the delay in receiving treatment accounts for a majority of the deaths. For those that survive, the lack of oxygen delivered to their brain can cause permanent brain damage while their pulse is restored. By lowering a patients body temperature within 6 hours of cardiac arrest, and keeping it lowered for 24 hours followed by gradual re-warming, the brain's metabolic functions are slowed, reducing brain damage and increasing long-term survivability.
The technique required the careful coordination of emergency medical technicians, nurses, hospitals and doctors and the constant vigilance required to keep the patients body temperature at a consistent level. Now that the technique is being performed in an ambulance en route to a hospital, it has become widely accepted and most area hospitals are equipped to handle therapeutic hypothermia patients. The quick administration of the therapy will help to increase the survival rates of the estimated 2,000 New York City heart attack victims eligible for the treatment.
