By Jonathan Graham
Sentinel & Enterprise (Fitchburg, Massachusetts)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc. and Mid-States Newspapers, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
LifeFlight Medical Director Dr. Marc C. Restuccia will fly on the 130-mph helicopter to accident scenes, helping to keep victims alive until they can get to the trauma center.
That helicopter flight -- the average time is 13 minutes -- can make a big difference to someone suffering from a back injury, Restuccia said.
“If there’s suspected spinal cord injury, you should probably use a helicopter,” Restuccia said, while standing on the UMass hospital’s helicopter pad. "... If you’ve got a broken back, it’s probably better to fly there than, and I hate to say it, jolt all the way down I-290.”
He said the LifeFlight medical crew will hook the victim to IVs and insert breathing tubes, if necessary.
“The two things we worry about the most is head injuries and chest injuries,” Restuccia said.
Restuccia said high-speed accidents are always the worst, and that’s why the LifeFlight crew tries to accomplish so much while they’re in the air.
“For trauma patients, we’ll try to get a complete history, find out what happened to the car, get a report from the EMT, but then we do all our interventions in route,” he said. “We try to get in the air as fast as possible.”
It takes less than three minutes to get the victim to the trauma center using a special elevator, once the helicopter lands, Restuccia said.
Diane Flanagan, a nurse with LifeFlight for 14 years, said the helicopter can take two patients if they are not in bad shape.
“If I have someone who I think may turn sour on me mid-flight, I will only take one patient,” Flanagan said.
If there is more than one victim at an accident scene, they will request helicopters from other hospitals, Flanagan said.
Flanagan remembered one multiple-victim accident at the intersection of the Massachusetts Pike and I-495.
A car with five people inside wrapped around a tree, and Flanagan went out with the helicopter.
“As we were landing, the color of the car was the same as my daughter’s, and the route was the same they would take to get to the mall,” Flanagan said.
She said her heart nearly stopped before she found out her family was safe.
Three out of the five people in the car later died, she said.
Flight nurse Diane Flanagan loads equpipment into a LifeFlight helicopter at UMass-Memorial Medical Center in Worcester recently.