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Hillsborough County Fire Rescue News Release, November 2, 2009
For Immediate Release
For more information contact:
Ray Yeakley, Public Information Officer
Fire Rescue Department
Telephone: 272-6600
Heart Attack Success Story
Paula Nightingale was just two minutes from her home when she went into cardiac arrest while driving her car on North Dale Mabry Highway. Luckily, a quick-thinking sheriff's officer saw her Saturn and called his dispatch, which activated a Hillsborough County Fire Rescue truck that just happened to be down the street and responded immediately. When HCFR arrived, they found Paula in lethal arrhythmia and immediately began CPR and defibrillation to restart her heart. Return of spontaneous circulation after cardiac arrest is one of the criteria that makes a patient a candidate for therapeutic hypothermia, a procedure much like putting ice on a sprained ankle to reduce swelling, this procedure reduces the damage to the heart after a heart attack. Once her heart was restarted, paramedics used ice packs and chilled IVs to start lowering her body temperature, and rushed her to St. Joseph's Hospital where she was met by the AMI Stroke Team. The Cool Guard catheter [Alsius] was placed into Paula's femoral vein, further cooling the internal core temperature 6-7 degrees. She was "cooled" for 24 hours and gradually re-warmed and taken out of a medically induced coma. Paula is awake and alert in her hospital room and has no memory of the incident, which is exactly the desired outcome, but rescuers and stroke team remember exactly how they saved her life: the smooth handoff from EMS to St. Joseph's Hospital emergency room using hypothermia induction.
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