By Blake Leschber
The Advocate
BATON ROUGE, La. — Paramedics will soon be able to administer blood to critically injured patients before they reach the hospital in East Baton Rouge Parish thanks to a new program and equipment that officials say can save lives.
East Baton Rouge Emergency Medical Services and the St. George Fire Department partnered to create the blood transfusion program, which officially starts on Monday, Oct. 26.
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EMS Director Chris Landry said the parish will be one of just three in the state that carry blood products, joining about 3% of agencies nationwide. St. George will also be the first fire department in the state to carry blood. Landry announced the program alongside representatives from EMS and St. George Fire during a news conference Wednesday morning at EMS Headquarters on Harding Boulevard.
“For patients who have life-threatening bleeding, this changes what happens in the first critical minutes,” Landry said. “Long before they reach the hospital, we’re going to be able to deploy lifesaving blood products and help them get into the hospital.”
Twenty EMS paramedics — called Blood Medics — alongside additional personnel at St. George Fire have been training since March to use the equipment. Dispatchers are also trained to detect when they need to call medics to bring blood transfusion equipment to the scene.
The Blood Medics will respond with blood-equipped units across the parish, and any crew that recognizes the need for blood can call for a unit right away, Landry said. The paramedics will carry equipment that refrigerates O-positive and O-negative blood provided by The Blood Center, keeps it at the proper temperature and can infuse an entire unit in about two to three minutes while at a scene or in the ambulance.
“When someone is suffering from life-threatening blood loss, time matters,” St. George Fire Department Chief Chad Roberson said. “Every minute we can shorten the time between that emergency and receiving blood, we can make a difference.”
Landry said research shows every minute a transfusion is delayed, the odds of death for that patient increase significantly.
Improving survival rates
This is not the first technology improvement EMS has made recently. In August, the agency decided to loan automated CPR devices, known as LUCAS Chest Compression Systems, to area fire departments. These allow first responders to do other lifesaving actions while the machines provide CPR.
“In trauma alone, there is a tripling of survival rates by giving blood in the field,” said Dr. Dan Godbee, medical director for EBR EMS and an emergency medicine physician. “There’s a multitude of things blood can be given for, all of which are indeed critical lifesaving interventions.”
Blood transfusion will be used in trauma incidents such as patients with gunshot wounds or car crashes, but it will also help patients with severe bleeding from incidents such as a ruptured aneurysm or a childbirth complication, which Godbee said will be the majority use of the program. Landry also said crews will seek consent from patients whenever possible and respect a patient’s decision to decline blood for personal or religious reasons.
Landry said when someone is bleeding severely, the danger isn’t just blood loss, but the loss of oxygen the blood carries.
“For years, the best thing we could do in the back of an ambulance was start IVs,” Landry said. “Fluids can help with volume, but they can’t carry oxygen. Those red blood cells we’re fixing to start putting in our patients, we’ll pair that with oxygen, and now our paramedics will be able to replace what is being lost right on the scene all the way to the hospital.”
Landry said the program is funded by money that already comes into EMS through the tax base and millage.
“The reality of it is, (the equipment) is very expensive, but we don’t put a price on the ability to possibly save somebody’s life,” Landry said.
Landry, Roberson and Godbee echoed the importance of blood donations for programs like this to be successful. Roberson also said only the community can provide the blood necessary for survival.
“We need people to donate,” Roberson said. “You may never know whose life the donation saves, but now that lifesaving blood can reach a patient before they even make it to the hospital.”
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