TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schalk, Richard
A1  - Schweigkofler, Uwe
A1  - Lotz, Gösta
A1  - Zacharowski, Kai
A1  - Latasch, Leo
A1  - Byhahn, Christian
T1  - Efficacy of the EZ-IO (R) needle driver for out-of-hospital intraosseous access - a preliminary, observational, multicenter study
T2  - Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine
N2  - Background: Intraosseous (IO) access represents a reliable alternative to intravenous vascular access and is explicitly recommended in the current guidelines of the European Resuscitation Council when intravenous access is difficult or impossible. We therefore aimed to study the efficacy of the intraosseous needle driver EZ-IO(R) in the prehospital setting.
Methods: During a 24-month period, all cases of prehospital IO access using the EZ-IO(R) needle driver within three operational areas of emergency medical services were prospectively recorded by a standardized questionnaire that needed to be filled out by the rescuer immediately after the mission and sent to the primary investigator. We determined the rate of successful insertion of the IO needle, the time required, immediate procedure-related complications, the level of previous experience with IO access, and operator's subjective satisfaction with the device.
Results: 77 IO needle insertions were performed in 69 adults and five infants and children by emergency physicians (n=72 applications) and paramedics (n=5 applications). Needle placement was successful at the first attempt in all but 2 adults (one patient with unrecognized total knee arthroplasty, one case of needle obstruction after placement). The majority of users (92%) were relative novices with less than five previous IO needle placements. Of 22 responsive patients, 18 reported pain upon fluid administration via the needle. The rescuers' subjective rating regarding handling of the device and ease of needle insertion, as described by means of an analogue scale (0 = entirely unsatisfied, 10 = most satisfied), provided a median score of 10 (range 1-10).
Conclusions: The EZ-IO(R) needle driver was an efficient alternative to establish immediate out-of-hospital vascular access. However, significant pain upon intramedullary infusion was observed in the majority of responsive patients.
KW  - Intraosseous access
KW  - EZ-IO® needle driver
KW  - Emergency medicine
Y1  - 2011
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/23168
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-231683
SN  - 1757-7241
N1  - © 2011 Schalk et al. ; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 19
IS  - Art. 65
SP  - 1
EP  - 5
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -