A survey of 1000 volunteer adults found 71% regularly watched medical television dramas, but only 12% said the shows “were a reliable source of health information.”
The participants were given some brief vignettes describing scenarios where CPR was administered—a 54-year-old who suffered a heart attack at home and received CPR by paramedics, an 80-year-old with a postoperative cardiac arrest in the hospital after surgery, and a post-traumatic arrest in an 8-year-old.
Those surveyed estimated CPR success rates at 57% to 72% and rates of long-term survival with neurologic recovery at 53% to 64%.
Last summer I wrote about the many problems associated with performing surgery in outer space. [Link here.] Not surprisingly, I was highly skeptical about such issues as training astronauts to operate on each other and the difficulties in taking along enough supplies to deal with unexpected trauma and surgical diseases.
At least one commentor on that post felt that NASA had all the answers. But another said, “What NASA never wants to discuss publicly is the scenario: If X happens then you die.”
Not to be outdone, the European Space Agency recently released a YouTube video illustrating how cardiopulmonary resuscitation could be carried out in a weightless environment.
You can see that the technique is rather awkward and questionably effective. To my knowledge, the rescuer falling on the victim is not currently recommended in the latest CPR guidelines.
Assuming that by some miracle the victim survives CPR, what would happen to him? Would he be transferred to the intensive care unit on the spaceship? Would there be a ventilator? What about an endotracheal tube and someone to insert it? Who would monitor the patient? Would that person be subject to work hours limits?
Here’s what I think.
If you have a cardiac arrest on the way to Mars, you’re not only in deep space, you’re in deep doodoo.
