Elsevier

Resuscitation

Volume 116, July 2017, Pages 46-48
Resuscitation

Commentary and concepts
The drone ambulance [A-UAS]: golden bullet or just a blank?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2017.04.037Get rights and content

Abstract

Defibrillation within the first minutes after sudden cardiac arrest can save many quality-adjusted life years. Yet, despite enormous investments, ‘healthcare’ is still unable to provide this for the majority of patients. Emergency Medical Services often have a too long mean response time and many issues surround Public Access Defibrillation programs. In this article we argument that AED-equipped drones could be the ‘magic bullet’. They are easily deployed and fast, and have a relatively low operational cost. As such they could rapidly bring an AED next to the victim, irrespective of most geographical circumstances, give visual feedback and situational awareness to the EMS dispatcher and thus assist a bystander to provide better CPR. Although there are many real-life barriers to actual deployment, we argument these might all get solved once we have solved the described technological issues.

Section snippets

Current issues in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest [OHCA]

Many lives can be saved by defibrillation within the first minutes after sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrest [OHCA] [1], [2], [3], [4]. This potential for saving lives and improving long-term outcome is one of the main reasons for many countries to support a large network of Emergency Medical Services [EMS] at high operational costs. Still, these EMS services −even with inclusion of other ‘first responders’ (police, fire brigade)- most often do not arrive within the first critical 5–10 min

Conclusion

A drone ambulance is a potentially feasible and cost-efficient way of saving many lives and quality-adjusted life years. The barriers to effective prototype development and field testing are huge but manageable. We invite research groups around the world to join the effort.

Author contribution and declaration of interests

None of the authors has any conflict of interest to declare.

All authors were actively involved in the writing and/or revisions of this concept paper. The authors declare there are no personal financial conflicts of interest relevant to this paper. PVDV is an active member of the European Resuscitation Council.

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    A Spanish translated version of the abstract of this article appears as Appendixi n the final online version at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2017.04.037.

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