H.8 Designing a Novel Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Machine For The Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory

Patients that present with an acute heart attack are rushed to the cardiac catheterization laboratory (cardiac cath lab for short) where interventional cardiologists try to save their lives by opening up their occluded coronary artery (arteries that supply the muscle of the heart).  These patients are sick and frequently arrest on the cardiac cath lab’s table. Chest compressions have been shown time and again to be the most important component of CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). However, manual chest compression is extremely labor intensive and exhausting, one person is rarely able to perform optimal chest compressions for more than 2 minutes. 

There are two machines that have been developed to facilitate hands off chest compressions but these have not been widely adopted in hospitals especially not in the cardiac cath lab where the majority of cardiac arrests occur. There are a number of reasons why the current devices are not used in the cath lab: they do not provide effective chest compressions, in the cath lab you need to be able to visualize the heart to help fix the cause of cardiac arrest and the current devices obstruct visualization by coming in-between the camera and the heart, moreover the height of the current devices obstruct the movement of the camera, they are not easily installed. 

The aim is to create a device that is easy to install, delivers excellent chest compressions, invisible on fluoroscopy, and responds to voice command.