Univ. of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics introduce new program for cardiac arrest patients

IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) - The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is introducing a new method to give certain cardiac arrest patients a better chance of survival.

It’s called ECPR and uses ECMO for patients who may not be responding to traditional CPR. Those doctors with the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics told TV9 that for patients who experience cardiac arrest outside of the hospital setting, time is of the essence.

This new program gives doctors more time to treat patients, increasing the survival rate for those who have a cardiac event.

“Nationally, prior to ECPR programs and using ECMO for these programs, the odds of survival for what we would define as a refractory out of hospital cardiac arrest, the odds of the patients leaving the hospital were 10 percent or less. Through the Arrest Trial that outcome has increased to up to 40 percent,” Dr. Jason Allen, a cardiologist with UIHC said.

ECPR started at the University of Minnesota, where Dr. Jason Allen did his interventional cardiology training during the trial for it.

Staff at the University of Iowa Hospital trained for over a year to be prepared to use the technique themselves. UIHC provided video of the technology in action.

“It’s a lot of resources to get everybody to work as a team. So, we needed to make sure we could do it as quick as possible for the best outcome for the patient,” said Kristina Rudolph, ECMO program manager.

ECPR is for patients who experience cardiac arrest outside of the hospital. It can be used if the patient doesn’t respond to traditional CPR or an AED and can be transported to the hospital within an hour.

”What we do is we bring these patients to our hospital and put them on ECMO which is essentially a heart by-pass machine and what that allows us to do is for us to then restore blood flow to the heart usually through coronary disease and coronary arteries,” Allen said.

UIHC is the first hospital in the state of Iowa to integrate this method of care and anticipate positive results.

”Again coming back to a fourfold increase in survival there’s really not a lot of technology or advantages that have equated to that and again we’re excited to bring that to our population here in Johnson County,” Allen said.

Again, not every patient will qualify for this method of care, but it may be an option for patients who go into cardiac arrest at home and can get to the UIHC main campus between 30 minutes and an hour.

Because of that the program will only be available for those in Johnson County.

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