Sydney Rotary & NSW Ambulance ECMO Project
Improving Cardiac Arrest Survival Rates in NSW
Sydney Rotary has funded NSW Ambulance with $75,000 to significantly improve survival rates from patients suffering cardiac arrest.
A cardiac arrest is when the heart suddenly stops beating. It is the most common cause of sudden death in otherwise healthy adults.
When cardiac arrests occur out-side of hospital it is called an “Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest”. Each year over 25,000 Australians suffer OHCA; approximately 9,000 of which occur in New South Wales.
Of all the OHCA in Australia less than 10% survive. If patients don’t get their heart beating again with CPR quickly (i.e. within 15 minutes) less than 3% survive.
ECMO stands for Extra-Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation. It is a mini “heart lung bypass machine” which pumps blood around the body during cardiac arrest and protect the body and brain, whilst the heart recovers and/or the cause of the cardiac arrest is treated. ECMO for cardiac arrest is used in select hospital for cardiac arrests with very promising results (30-40% survival) if it is implemented within 1 hour from cardiac arrests.
ECMO for OHCA has been offered at a small number of hospitals owing to the technical and resource challenges. Unfortunately, a very small percentage of OHCA that may benefit from ECMO can get to the right hospital in the right time (<5%). This problem has been demonstrated through geospatial analysis and recent trials where they tried to get the patient to hospital quickly.
PRECARE is the full name for this trial “Pre-hospital ECMO CPR for Refractory Cardiac Arrest”. The trial is on the leading edge of cardiac arrest management globally.
Sydney Rotary has adopted this as a project for the Club in the 2025-26 Presidential year.
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