Big Power, Little Package

EMS is a big responsibility, and its equipment has big requirements. When you’re hurrying to the side of a medical or trauma victim, the tools of your trade need to be potent, portable, and fast and easy to use—not heavy and cumbersome on complicated scenes.

But when providers at Ohio’s Lawrence County EMS were weighing recent options for monitor/defibrillators, things didn’t seem to be trending that way. Some of them “seemed like they got bigger and bulkier, and our crews didn’t like it,” recalls Supervisor Mac Yates. “We were trying to get away from the weight and bulkiness.”

The answer to that was ZOLL’s new X Series, which blends the industry’s smallest size and weight (11.7 lbs/5.3 kg) with attributes equal to and greater than those of past larger models. Among those are a pair of key CPR technologies: Real CPR Help, which gives feedback on compression rate, depth and recoil, and See-Thru CPR, which filters out compression artifact on the ECG display and helps limit interruptions by letting rescuers see underlying rhythms without pausing. It is the first monitor/defibrillator with integrated WiFi to supplement Bluetooth and USB cellular modem data-transmission options, and features state-of-the-art noninvasive blood pressure technology and the longest available battery run time.

Yates noted the X Series’ blood pressure capabilities (which can separate pulses from artifact and calculate pressure during cuff inflation) and ability to show multiple waveforms simultaneously, including up to four physiological waveforms or all 12 ECG leads. It also offers simultaneous viewing of dynamic and acquired 12-leads/analysis information and a snapshot capability that allows printing of 24-second ECG windows.

The X Series works with ZOLL’s RescueNet 12-Lead to manage and distribute ECGs, and will work with RescueNet Link to upload and stream care data in real time to other system players. And practically speaking, Lawrence County’s crews have found it easy to carry and use.

“The biggest thing is the compact size, with everything you can get with it,” says Yates. “It has all the bells and whistles.”

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