Rescue workers can save lives with breathing tubes
Published: May 28, 2007
Giving rescue workers training to administer drugs and insert a tube down the throat of someone with life-threatening breathing problems can save lives, Canadian researchers reported.
The small but significant reduction in the risk of death is important because 2 million people with respiratory distress - often from asthma, pneumonia or congestive heart failure - are taken to U.S. hospitals each year.
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers said the death rate went from 14.3 percent before intubation and drugs became available to rescue workers, to 12.4 percent after it was.
The difference was less than 2 percentage points, but that could translate into 20,000 lives saved each year in the U.S. and Canada, said the team led by Dr. Ian Stiell of the University of Ottawa.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: