Test series in South Tyrol

Defibrillator drone beats rescue helicopter

The test took place in the Fanes-Sennes-Prags Nature Park in South Tyrol, a place with more than 17,000 visitors per day in the high season, most of whom use a four-kilometre circular hiking trail around a lake. (symbolic image)

(Bild: Tomschi Peter)

In future, a semi-automatic defibrillator that can be operated by laypeople could arrive at the scene of an emergency within minutes by drone. The aim is to increase the survival rate of people suffering a sudden cardiac arrest. A series of tests in South Tyrol supports such a system.

"The global incidence of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest averages 55 per 100,000 people per year. The mortality rate is around 90 percent. (...) Eyewitness defibrillation with an automated external defibrillator(AED; note) within the first three to five minutes before the arrival of emergency services can increase the survival rate to 50 to 70 percent if they can be effectively guided to a nearby publicly accessible defibrillator (PAD)," Michiel van Veelen (Institute for Mountain Emergency Medicine/Bolzano and Institute for Sports Science/University of Innsbruck) and his co-authors have now written in the "American Journal of Emergency Medicine".

While efforts have been underway for years in urban centers to install such defibrillators in public places, such an undertaking is de facto hopeless in rural regions. However, new technologies could possibly help. This includes new means of transportation for defibrillators to the exact location where they are needed. Scientists have therefore tested a new system in the Fanes-Sennes-Prags Nature Park in South Tyrol.

Race
"Our aim was to assess the feasibility of autonomous delivery of automated external defibrillators by drones in a non-urban area with physical barriers and to compare the time to defibrillation with recovery by passers-by from a publicly accessible defibrillator point and defibrillation performed by a doctor from the rescue helicopter," reads the scientific paper.

The experiment was conducted with twelve volunteers. A total of 36 simulations were carried out in random order, including obtaining a defibrillator and starting to use the defibrillator. The participants in the test each used the devices twice in random order. On one occasion, a drone delivered the defibrillator directly from a station location to the place of use. Once, an "eyewitness" had to fetch the defibrillator from a fixed point on foot. Finally, two doctors carried out a simulated ground approach by helicopter.

The test took place in the Fanes-Sennes-Prags Nature Park in South Tyrol, a place with more than 17,000 visitors a day in the high season, most of whom use a four-kilometre circular hiking trail around a lake. The area lies at an altitude of 1496 meters and is around 33 kilometers from the nearest rescue helicopter base in Brixen. Six points around the lake were chosen as deployment sites, which were 50 meters to 1.6 kilometers away from a publicly accessible defibrillator site or the drone launch site.

Drone fastest
The results speak in favor of defibrillator transport by drone in acute cardiovascular emergencies. The time from the alarm to the use of the defibrillator was only 2.2 minutes on average when delivered by drone. In contrast, it took an average of 12.4 minutes if an "eyewitness" of the assumed sudden cardiac arrest first had to walk to a fixed defibrillator location to retrieve the device. When delivered by an emergency helicopter, the average time between the alarm and arrival was 18.2 minutes.

In special questionnaires, the test subjects also reported dramatically less physical strain when using a defibrillator that had arrived by drone. The drone model Q4X (MAVTech) automatically flew to the coordinate positions from the emergency call by cell phone. It released a polystyrene box containing the defibrillator above the deployment site, which then glided to the ground on a parachute