Lake Zurich paramedics honored

By Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital said Wednesday it has awarded the Lake Zurich Fire Department and the Kildeer Police Department Platinum Awards for excellence in cardiac care.

During the holidays, authorities responded to an emergency call that a 55-year old man had collapsed at Deer Park Town Center.

Kildeer police immediately initiated CPR, and upon arrival, Lake Zurich paramedics recognized that the man was in cardiac arrest, and administered CPR, defibrillation, medications and other treatment that promptly brought the patients’ heart function back, the hospital said in a news release.

After resuscitating the patient, he was transported to Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington where he received further treatment in the cardiac catheterization lab. Because of the prompt care he received by paramedics, and procedures done in the cardiac catheterization lab, the patient was eventually discharged from the hospital to resume his normal life.

In recent years, Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital has funded and installed wireless 12-lead communications equipment in area ambulances. This technology allows paramedics to remotely send real-time electrocardiogram (ECG) transmissions directly to Good Shepherd’s ER, where emergency medicine physicians and cardiologists can view directly what’s going on inside a patient’s heart from miles away.

“It gives us the lead time we need to prepare a ‘cardiac alert’ team at the door to receive the patient — we already know what’s going on and what needs to be done,” said Dr. Joseph Giangrasso, medical director of emergency and trauma services at Good Shepherd.

Officials from the hospital will present the paramedic crew and police officers with the award 1 p.m. Friday, Feb. 18, at 321 S. Buesching Road in Lake Zurich.

Good Shepherd said its linkup with EMS crews enables it to have very fast door-to-balloon time — the measure of how long it takes for a patient from arrival from the field to when they receive angioplasty to clear a blocked blood vessel in the cardiac catheterization lab.

“The national benchmark is 90 minutes for door-to-balloon; we’re consistently below 60 minutes,” Giangrasso said in the news release.

In the case of the 55-year old man, Lake Zurich paramedics administered the wireless 12-lead and transmitted the ECG test back to Good Shepherd. In the end, their door-to-balloon time was 38 minutes, the hospital said.

Paramedics partnering with Good Shepherd can call a ‘cardiac alert’ in the field without transmitting the ECG. Good Shepherds’ EMS department trained paramedics and first responders to the point where it is the only area hospital that has its paramedics call for a ‘cardiac alert’ team to assemble based on their interpretation of the 12-lead ECG, the news release said.