A group of Polish experts in cardiology and emergency medicine, encouraged by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines, have recently published common recommendations for medical emergency teams regarding the pre-hospital management of patients with acute coronary syndrome. Due to the recent publication of the 2017 ESC guidelines for the management of acute myocardial infarction in patients presenting with ST-segment elevation and 2017 focused update on dual antiplatelet therapy in coronary artery disease the current panel of experts decided to update the previous standpoint. Moreover, new data coming from studies presented after the previous document was issued were also taken into consideration.
Potential attributes of virtual reality (VR) can be a breakthrough in the improvement of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) training. However, interference with the virtual world is associated with the need of placing additional equipment on the trainee's body. The primary aim of the study was to evaluate if it does not affect the quality of chest compressions (CCs).
91 voluntarily included in the study medical students participated twice in the scenario of SCA – Traditional Scenario (TS) and Virtual Reality Scenario (VRS). In both cases two minutes of resuscitation was performed.
If VRS was the first scenario there were significant differences in CCs depth (VRS - Me = 47 mm [IQR 43 – 52] vs TS - Me = 48 mm [IQR 43 – 55];
P
= .02) and chest relaxation (VRS - Me = 37% [IQR 5 – 91] vs TS - Me = 97% [IQR 87 – 100];
P
< .001). 97.8% of respondents believe that training with the use of VR is more effective than a traditional method (
P
< .01). Most of the study group (91%,
P
< .01) denied any negative symptoms during the VR scenario.
Virtual reality can be a safe and highly valued by medical students, method of hands-on CPR training. However additional VR equipment placed on the trainee's body may cause chest compressions harder to provide. If it is not preceded by traditional training, the use of VR may have an adverse impact on depth and full chest relaxation during the training. To make the best use of all the potential that virtual reality offers, future studies should focus on finding the most effective way to combine VR with traditional skill training in CPR courses curriculum.
Currently, there are plenty of videolaryngoscopes that appear on the market. They have different specifications. Some of these features favor the fact that they are more suited for educational purposes of future operators and others can be characterized with an excellent clinical use. In this study we compared four types of videolaryngoscopes. The aim of the study was to compare the technical specifications of the above-mentioned devices for usefulness in clinical practice and correlate these parameters with the subjective evaluation of these videolaryngoscopes usage performed in practice by an experienced medical staff. All devices considered in this study participated in another multicenter clinical study on the basis of which we completed the subjective evaluation of the operators. In order to examine the technical parameters of the equipment we established the cooperation with the Department of Microelectronics at Technical University of Lodz. Mechanical and optical parameters and the endoscopic tube current were taken into consideration. The C-MAC has a camera with the widest viewing angle (the OX axis—63.1, the axis OY—47.8), which in combination with the largest diagonal size of the display enables the operator to see the details relevant to clinical practice. It has also the strongest lamp intensity of the devices mentioned in this comparison (7800 Lx). In comparison of the clinical use in almost all compared parameters the Cmac D-blade is a winner, although for clinical education purpose we consider the Vividtrac a better device.
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