Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Related, the ambulance system where I live has been running a clinical trail using a mobile ECMO unit (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) [1,2]. An invasive procedure that oxygenates and pumps blood. It's boosted survival rate for those who are not responding to CPR (15-20 minutes duration) from 3% to 28%. The general CPR survival rate is an exponential looking curve: starting around 20%, reducing to 10% at 10 minutes and 3% at 20 minutes [3].

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-07/nsw-ambulance-ecmo-tr...

[2] https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/mobile-cardiac-treatme...

[3] https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076019

Edit: The numbers in [3] are optimistic, as they are for in-hospital CPR, not out-of-hospital CPR.




Similar program in Melbourne [1] https://sjtrem.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13049-023...

(There are similar programs around the world with different models of care, notably in Paris, Albuquerque, the Netherlands and Regensburg, Germany).


A paper with data on the locations referred to by bearsnowstorm: https://intjem.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12245-023...


The Pitt, a recent ER show, features ECMO :)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31938062/


Great show


Ecmo is amazing, and has so much more potential if made available in this way, at the front lines of care.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: