Despite significant advances in emergency medicine, the survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims remains at only 5% nationwide. The American Heart Association advocates a chain of survival, which includes 1) early access to the emergency medical system (EMS), 2) early cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and 3) early advanced cardiac care, including the administration of resuscitative cardiac drugs. Currently, these drugs can be administered only by emergency medical technicians (EMT's) certified at advanced levels of training. A huge potential exists to save more cardiac arrest victims if advanced cardiac care could be simplified such that it could be administered by first responders and EMT-basics, who are often first on the scene after arrest. Accordingly, the goal of this Phase I SBIR project is to develop the VidaPen, a unit-dose intraosseous auto-injector for easy administration of resuscitative cardiac medications. In Phase I of the project, VidaCare will design and build a prototype device, bench test the prototype in simulated bone material, and conduct pilot studies of the device in anesthetized animals and human cadavers. In Phase II of the project, VidaCare will refine the device into a commercial-ready prototype, conduct further pre-clinical and engineering studies, and (in conjunction with EMS organizations) conduct a study of clinical outcomes of out-of-hospital arrest victims treated with the VidaPen intraosseous auto-injector.
Thesaurus Terms: biomedical equipment development, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, clinical biomedical equipment, drug delivery system, emergency service, injection /infusion, portable biomedical equipment adenosine, amiodarone, atropine, cardiovascular disorder education, consumable /disposable biomedical equipment, dosage, epinephrine, hypodermic needle, patient care management, sodium bicarbonate, sudden cardiac death, tibia bioengineering /biomedical engineering, goat, health services research tag, human tissue, postmortem
