Next year, the fire department in Brook Park will have five new capnography machines - as opposed to the one they have now. "The lesson that I certainly learn from this is you don't quit - you keep trying to stop that rhythm as long as you have objective, measurable evidence that the patient's brain is being protected by adequate blood flow as determined by the capnographic data," says White.Ĭapnography is slowly becoming standard equipment for emergency responders. Without the information from capnography, he says, it would have been reasonable to stop CPR - and Snitzer likely would have died. Snitzer never had a pulse despite good carbon dioxide readings. He says those methods are very crude and can fail. White says that before the use of capnography, the only way of assessing blood flow to vital organs was by feeling for a pulse or by looking for dilated pupils. When a pulse and a regular heartbeat had been restored, Snitzer was airlifted to the Mayo Clinic. "We just continued believing that the measurement of carbon dioxide pressure said that if we can stop that fatal rhythm, Howard will be OK," White explains.Īfter shocking Snitzer's heart 12 times and administering intravenous drugs, they finally did manage to stop that fatal heart rhythm. He's the one who finally came up with the solution to get Snitzer's heart beating normally again. Roger White, an anesthesiologist at Mayo Clinic. And it was at that point that he called Dr. "And he hung up and he said to the rest of the people in the room, 'Is anyone else here uncomfortable with walking away from this?' And they all said yes. The nurse "called the emergency room doctor, who told him that I was dead and that they should walk away," says Snitzer. Snitzer's carbon dioxide levels suggested that blood was flowing to vital organs like the heart and brain, and the nurse thought Snitzer still had a chance. But one of the flight nurses who had come with the emergency helicopter had been trained in capnography. Emergency room doctors said there was nothing more they could do. "They said, 'We were wondering what you remember about your heart attack.' And I said, 'Nothing.' And they said, 'Well, here's what we remember.' And they started telling this story, and I was just blown away," Snitzer recalls.įor more than an hour and a half, Snitzer had no pulse. After he woke up days later, some of the emergency medical personnel who helped that night told him what had happened. That was certainly the case for Howard Snitzer when he collapsed in front of a Minnesota grocery store one cold night last January. In fact, it's been around for years, used by anesthesiologists to monitor a patient's breathing during surgery.īut these days, the technology is making its way out of hospital operating rooms and into portable devices that are helping first responders make critical - sometimes life-saving - decisions. That's where you're going to get a positive outcome," Lynch says.Ĭapnography is not a new technology. "Now, during good CPR, this is probably going to be around 25 - if you keep this up in that 25 range, then there's circulation still going on. Lynch explains that if I were unconscious and receiving CPR, the carbon dioxide levels would tell them how efficiently their chest compressions were pumping blood through my lungs and to my organs. By breathing rapidly, I blow out carbon dioxide, and the number on the screen goes down. As I change my breathing, the number changes, too. There is also a number on the screen that corresponds to the carbon dioxide I exhale - an estimate of carbon dioxide levels in my blood. "Every time I breathe out, it goes up," I remark. I watch the monitor as I inhale and exhale. Mark Lynch says, pointing at a graph on the screen that moves up and down when I breathe. "OK, that last data stream there is the capnography. It also helps them decide how to treat an asthma attack, or determine whether CPR is working.Īt a fire station in Brook Park, Ohio, medical officers put a tube in my nose and hook me up to the machine to show me how it works. This information helps doctors and emergency medical personnel determine whether a patient is hyperventilating or having a heart attack. It's called capnography, and it measures how much carbon dioxide is being expelled with each breath. But first responders who gave CPR on the scene decided not to give up, in part because of technology that allowed them to see their efforts were working. Emergency room doctors thought he was dead. Last January, a Minnesota man's heart stopped beating for an amazing 96 minutes. First responders didn't give up on him, thanks in part to capnography, a technology that let them know Snitzer still had a chance of coming back. Howard Snitzer's heart stopped beating for 96 minutes last January.
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