The odds were against Mark Peters’ sitting across the table from me and boasting of the impressive crimson scar under his shirt.

Most who suffer cardiac arrest do not make it to the hospital, let alone reemerge whole. But here he was, spike-haired and 23, enthusing about his good fortune, a rainbow of rubber “cause” bracelets wobbling around his animated wrists.

The one that matters in this story was red, for the Gregory W. Moyer Defibrillator Fund, which aims to put automated external defibrillators where they’re needed most desperately.

Moyer, Peters’ boyhood pal, died at halftime during a high school basketball game in 2000 because no device was on hand to reset the rhythm of his heart - not in the brand-new Monroe County school, not in the first ambulance, which took a half-hour to respond.

Moyer - seemingly invincible at 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds - died at age 15. (more…)

Hospitals in Oregon and Washington are standardizing overhead calls and color codes to reduce the risk of confusion or human error. The move follows a survey that found wide variation in the emergency codes among the region’s hospitals. This matters because many doctors and nurses now work at more than one place. Correspondent Tom Banse reports.

If you’ve spent any time in a hospital, you know that the staff sometimes speak in code.

Overhead page: “Code blue in ER one. Code blue…”

Here at Capital Medical Center in Olympia, “code blue” means a patient’s breathing or heart has stopped. But at a few hospitals, code blue means “get security.” So now imagine a scenario involving a doctor or nurse who’s recently switched hospitals. Her patient goes into sudden cardiac arrest. She instinctively calls for code blue. But instead of the resuscitation team, the security guard comes running. This really happened at an unnamed Washington hospital. It is one reason Capital Medical Center’s chief nursing officer favors standardization.

Lisa Moylen: “When temporary personnel come, within the first hour they’re here they’re oriented to the codes because that’s very important. It would certainly be a lot easier if there were some universal components.”

Lisa Moylen says the use of temp nurses and traveling nurses has gone way up since she started in medicine 40 years ago.

(more…)

Starting next month, if you have a seizure requiring emergency treatment, you could be enrolled in a research trial without your permission.

While subjects in most medical studies must sign lengthy forms to participate, unconscious, convulsing patients can’t give consent. So paramedics will enroll seizure victims in the new study automatically, unless they’re wearing a red “opt-out” bracelet.

The unusual approach has been carefully reviewed by medical and ethics experts, and researchers say most people at high-risk for seizures have been supportive.

Stanford and the University of California-San Francisco are two of 17 research centers nationwide that will be studying the best way to give anti-seizure medications. Patients being transported to hospitals in Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties will be subject to the new study.

It’s the only way to learn about life-saving treatments in an emergency, said Dr. James Quinn, associate professor of emergency medicine at Stanford and a lead researcher on the Rapid Anticonvulsant Medication Prior to Arrival Trial (RAMPART). (more…)