TCT: Physio-Control touts battery-powered CPR device
For years, the Lucas automated chest compression device was powered only pneumatically. However, the company now released the Lucas 2 with a lithium ion polymer battery that lasts up to 45 minutes, which was showcased at the 21st annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference.

Most transport times of sudden cardiac arrest patients are under 15 minutes. For longer times, however, the Lucas 2 can be plugged into a car outlet. At the hospital, the device also can be plugged into a wall outlet. The battery, which takes less than 10 seconds to change, will charge while plugged in.

The company received 510(k) clearance for the battery-operated device in June.

Like the first-generation device, the battery-powered model follows American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines by delivering 100 compressions per minute, at a depth of 1.5 to 2 inches. The depth is calibrated according to body size and the automated CPR device allows the chest to fully recoil, which helps provide better reperfusion to the brain and heart, according to a company spokesperson.

The list price is approximately $14,000 and there is no reimbursement directly tied to the device in the U.S.

Goron Olivecrona, MD, from the department of cardiology at Lund University in Lund, Sweden, said the device can save a number of patients per year, depending on how busy one’s cath lab is.

“We are a large cath lab with a lot of STEMI patients and we save one to two patients a year with the Lucas device that we wouldn’t normally save,” he said in an interview at the TCT meeting.

About 75 percent of the patients that experience sudden cardiac arrest in Olivecrona’s cath lab are STEMI patients. Once the patient arrests, the crash team is alerted, the backplate is inserted under the patient, the device is started and the procedure continues.

“More than 25 percent of these patients leave the hospital in normal neurological condition,” he said. Olivecrona and colleagues presented a poster at the meeting showing this one-quarter survival rate out of 40 patients who “have crashed over the years.”

Olivecrona has been using the Lucas in the cath lab since 2004.

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