GWAAC installs arterial line heart monitors on vehicles

Great Western Air Ambulance Charity (GWAAC), which provides air medical services across western England, has introduced arterial line blood pressure monitors across its air and road vehicle fleets.

Unlike standard ‘cuff’ blood pressure monitors, the arterial line monitors are inserted directly into the patient’s artery. GWAAC says that the device enables continuous blood pressure monitoring, as opposed to every two minutes as with the cuff method.

Advantages of using the arterial line include:

• Instant information on a patient’s blood pressure
• Ability to tailor treatment to improve a patient’s condition
• A faster response to a patient’s changing condition.

GWAAC says that the new equipment – which is not standard in ambulances and is usually restricted to hospital use – will mean a greater chance of survival and onward recovery for patients.

The introduction of the new equipment is in response to the high number of emergencies responded to by GWAAC that involving trauma or a life-threatening cardiac arrest. In 2021, over 500 of the 1,964 callouts responded to by the charity involved a patient suffering a heart attack.

“Invasive blood pressure monitoring is common practice in intensive care and I’m confident that its use in the pre-hospital environment will be beneficial to patients,” said GWAAC’S Critical Care Doctor, Matt Thomas, whose specialty is intensive care.

Kent Surrey Sussex Air Ambulance also announced that it had installed arterial blood pressure monitors across its fleets in February 2022.

The new blood pressure monitors are already in use

GWAAC says that the first patient to utilize the new equipment was a Gloucestershire man who suffered a cardiac arrest in the autumn of 2021.

“The patient was lucky that he had immediate CPR from bystanders then excellent care from South Western Ambulance Service before we arrived,” explained Dr Thomas. “We were fortunate to be able to land close by, which saved time.  The patient’s blood pressure needed to be managed carefully. After a cardiac arrest, it is vital that we keep a patient’s blood pressure stable using powerful medications only carried by Critical Care Teams.

“The arterial lines and blood pressure monitoring significantly improves our accuracy in using these drugs. I use the arterial line daily on my intensive care unit, so am confident its pre-hospital use will hugely improve patient care,” he added.