In early December, a 71-year-old Swede had a heart attack while clearing snow in his garage. A few minutes later, help arrived, however, in a less conventional way. In addition to being lucky to have a doctor nearby, a drone carrying a defibrillator was sent, allowing the patient to be saved quickly.
The resuscitation procedure must be done quickly to work. A person’s chance of surviving a heart attack decreases by between 7% and 10% with each passing minute. the service of Emergency Medical Air Delivery (EMADE) from the company Everdrone receives calls for rescue measures. In cases like this, the patient can be saved even before an ambulance arrives.
In the specific case, which took place in the city of Trollhättan, Everdrone AB received a call about the accident. And that was enough for the team to send a drone with a Automated External Defibrillator (AED) to the patient’s address.
According to the company that provides the services, the equipment could be immediately connected to the patient, allowing the doctor to carry out the correct procedure at the time. Even so, the patient in this particular case still had to be taken to the hospital for further care.
Equipment arrived in just over 3 minutes
From the moment the call was made, the arrival time of the defibrillator at the address was a little over 3 minutes. Dr Mustafa Ali, the doctor who saved the man’s life, said the patient no longer had a pulse when he arrived at the scene.
“I was on my way to work at the local hospital when I looked out the car window and saw a man passed out in his garage. I immediately realized something was wrong and rushed to help. The man had no pulse, so I started CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) while asking someone else to call 112 (the emergency number in Sweden). A few minutes later, I saw something flying above my head. It was a drone with a defibrillator!”, reported Dr. Ali.
The 71-year-old patient who was saved is now fully recovered from his heart attack and thanked him saying: “I cannot express in words how grateful I am for this new technology and the speed of delivery of the defibrillator. If it weren’t for the drone, I probably wouldn’t be here.”
technology that saves lives
Everdrone CEO Mats Sällström also commented on the fact: “This is an excellent real-world example of how Everdrone’s state-of-the-art drone technology, fully integrated with emergency dispatch, can minimize access time to AED equipment that save lives.”
According to data collected by the company, 275,000 patients in Europe and 350,000 in the US suffer from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) annually. In 70% of cases, the sites do not have nearby equipment for resuscitation, and the ambulance’s arrival time may not be enough to save the patient.
The EMADE service can serve around 200,000 Swedes. However, the company revealed that it wants to expand its services to other countries in Europe in 2022.
More than a hobby or a job, drones are showing uses for the population’s lives. Recently, with the help of technology, Japanese company Duskin Co. used a drone to eliminate dangerous wasps, and Airobotics jointly designed UAVs with ShotSpotter to service sites with firearms registrations in Israel.
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