DRF Luftrettung holds Annual Medical Meeting
DRF Luftrettung has reported on its Annual Medical Meeting, where developments in emergency and intensive-care medicine were the focus.
DRF Luftrettung has reported on its Annual Medical Meeting, where developments in emergency and intensive-care medicine were the focus. Around 100 participants, including leading physicians and paramedics of the DRF Luftrettung’s helicopter emergency services (HEMS) bases, as well as guests from Federal Police HEMS bases, met in Bad Saarow. Dr Karl-Heinz Grütte of the Brandenburg Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health and Family began proceedings by giving an insight into the rescue system in Brandenburg. He emphasised that air rescue is especially important in sparsely populated regions like Brandenburg, not least due to the decreasing number of emergency physician sites and maximum care clinics. The growing significance of air rescue was also the subject of a lecture given by Prof. Dr André Gries. He introduced a survey that will be carried out to examine ground and air-based emergency services in Hessen, supported by the Ministry of Labour, Family and Health, as well as the Regional Council in Gießen. The survey will not only examine the time between the alert and the arrival of the rescue service at the emergency scene, but also include the complete time span covering patient care from the alert until the start of diagnostics and therapy in the destination clinic. Use of the emergency systems will be developed with possible optimisation of availability, time to reach care, and selection of the destination clinic. Methods for patient cooling in emergency medicine were on the agenda. In this context, a new form of transnasal cooling was presented, which has already been successfully used with patients suffering from cardiac arrest. An equivalent device, which causes a fast cooling of the brain, is currently being tested at the DRF Luftrettung’s Freiburg HEMS base. In addition, new transport systems for cooling pharmaceuticals and infusions were introduced. Further presentations of the conference concerned new developments in trauma care, techniques of non-invasive haemoglobin determination, as well as topics from pharmacology and the current status of the PEER project. DRF Luftrettung has introduced the latter for mission review and stress management for its crews. Summing up the even, Dr Jörg Braun, DRF Luftrettung medical director, said: “The good evaluations of the participants show that the event offers an important discussion forum and spreads new professional knowledge. We would like to give new impetus for emergency medicine. Only in this way, can we maintain our high quality standards which benefit our patients.” The DRF Luftrettung operates 42 HEMS bases in Germany, Austria and Italy with more than 50 helicopters for emergency rescue and intensive care transport between hospitals.