ENON — Thanks to a grant from the Mercy Health Foundation -- three emergency rooms in Clark and Champaign counties are now equipped with a new life-saving CPR tool.
Each emergency room, in Enon, Springfield and Urbana, received a LUCAS Chest Compression device. The LUCAS 3 delivers consistent chest compressions to someone who is in cardiac arrest.
Mercy Health Dayton-Springfield Emergency Center Nursing Manager Amanda Speakman said the device frees up staff to do other important tasks in a critical situation like give a patient medications, prepare IVs or communicate with other nurses.
Speakman said at smaller facility like the emergency center in Enon/Fairborn -- the device will make an even bigger difference.
“You are supposed to change (people giving compressions) every two minutes because you are compressing at a rate of at least 120 (beats) a minute,” Speakman told News Center 7′s Jenna Lawson. “That takes a lot of energy, and when you may only have a couple nurses, that’s every two minutes you have to be changing out."
Speakman said the device can run solely on consistent compressions if a patient’s airway has already been established or it can be set to give compressions at a rate of 30 compressions to two breaths.
The LUCAS device can run on a single battery charge for about 45 minutes, and because a machine is giving the patient chest compressions -- it doesn’t wear out in the same way that humans do.
Speakman said the emergency room got the device on Oct. 11. Since then, the staff has had to use it on a patient and it was successful at restoring their pulse.
The LUCAS devices were purchased through a $51,000 grant from the Mercy-Health Foundation Clark and Champaign Counties.