The Impact of Rescuer Fatigue and Quality During Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation by Using Personal Protective Equipment. A Randomized Controlled Crossover Trial.

Background:

High-quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation is the key to recovering patients with sudden cardiac death. However, when the environment is exposure to biologic hazard, the medical personnel need to use different personal protective equipment while doing CPR, and this difficulty is greatly increased. The research on this part is quite limited, and the results need to be further analyzed.

Purpose:

Compare the effects of CPR wearing different levels of personal protective equipment on CPR quality and rescue fatigue.

Material & Methods:

This study is designed as a prospective randomized crossover trial with an expected total of 40 volunteer participants, performed during 2021 April 1 to 2021 June 30. Each participant is required to perform a five-minute CPR in kneeling position using three different types of personal protective equipment. These three modes are Level D protective equipment with surgical mask, Level C protective equipment with N-95 mask, and Level-C protective equipment with Powered Air Purifying Respirator. Participants are physicians or nurses at the hospital. The participation are randomly assigned to the order of the three modes, and each mode can be rested for 120 minutes. Laerdal Skillreporter is used for CPR and quality measurement. The main results were effective chest compression ratio, correct chest depth ratio, correct chest recoil ratio and chest compression number per minute. The secondary results were personal blood pressure before and after the CPR, heartbeat, pulse oximeter, number of breaths, and subjective fatigue index (VAS 1 ~ 100 points), Questionnaire for the opinion of wearing personal protective equipment and using the porta count test to test the N-95 face mask for its quantitative fitness factor before and during CPR, and infrared detector for qualitative fitness test.