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| What
to do when your battery dies? |
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In emergency situations,
such as Cardiac or Respiratory Arrest, the very nature of
the emergency requires that the rescuer work quickly if lives
are to be saved.
The rescuer's equipment must be accurate, reliable and ready for action whenever
a breathing emergency arises. Constant checking of equipment is of paramount
importance and the less variables that have to be checked, the less chance for
mistakes or equipment failure during the critical stages of resuscitation.
Over the years, automatic resuscitators have been primarily powered by oxygen.
The major drawback to this is that the "Drive Gas Consumption" (the
amount of gas from the cylinder that is used to power the device and does not
go to the patient) has been high and therefore critical resuscitation time on
a standard cylinder is reduced. There are modern "state-of-the-art" pneumatically
powered resuscitators now available that use minimal, if not zero drive gas.
Some resuscitators use battery power to actuate the automatic cycling and do
not consume any gas in the powering of the resuscitator. This initially appears
to be the answer to the rescuers prayers until we look at the implications that
a second power source can bring.
Although these devices use batteries to cycle the mechanism they will require
an oxygen supply to actually ventilate the patient. Without one or the other
the device will simply not provide resuscitation.
Having to ensure that both the batteries are fully charged and the cylinder is
full adds an extra burden of responsibility on the rescuer and is one more thing
that can cause a problem or a delay, at a critical time. Also, these battery
powered devices require 15 hours to fully re-charge the batteries. Can you afford
that amount of down time on equipment, or the increased cost of having to carry
spare units to replace those that are out of service being charged, when critical
seconds can make the difference to a successful resuscitation? |
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