Making cardiac massage in microgravity is a challenge for the absence of weight: the machines that perform the maneuver automatically can help.
In the long -lasting space missions, procedures and equipment for medical emergencies will be necessary to provide. For one of these – the heart massage – there is already a protocol that astronauts learn during training and which allows you to perform life -saving pressure on the chest also in microgravity. But it requires “acrobatic” and not always effective maneuvers, and now some scientists have proposed an alternative.
Heart massage in the absence of weight
What is commonly called cardiac massage is a part of the wider and most complex of cardio-dusted resuscitation (RCP), a first aid procedure that can save life to those who are in cardiac or respiratory arrest. It provides for the execution, in fact, of cardiac massage, that is, a series of chest compressions, and artificial ventilation (mouth mouth breathing, or mouth-mouth). But how do you compress the chest without the help of gravity, that is, without being able to count on your weight?
On earth, cardiac massage must be carried out by performing 5-6 centimeters deep chest compressions and with a frequency of 100-120 compressions per minute. On the International Space Station, without the weight of the rescuer to come to help, the cardio-pulmonary resuscitation procedures provide unusual positions, the best known of which is a sort of vertical: the astronaut to be rescued is placed against a wall of the passenger compartment and the rescuer rests his feet on the opposite one, pressing with his hands on the chest of the colleague, as in the photo below.
Parabolic flight tests
These maneuvers, however, hardly reach the desirable compression depth of compression: and if the Astronauts of the ISS leave for missions in perfect health and constantly monitored for any heart problems, in a longer spatial mission or with greater risks the problem of how to make a heart massage could present itself in a more stringent way.
A group of scientists from the Chu di Nancy, the University of Lorena, the University of Paris and the French space agency has tested the conditions of free falls experienced by the astronauts on the ISS on the ISS different automatic devices of thoracic compression, used on earth in situations in which manual compressions are simulated on short -time intervals for short -time intervals. One type in particular, the automatic piston masseur (who provides compressions and decompressions in the center of the chest through a suction cup) was effective in reaching the desired depth for heart massage.
An additional (but precious) load
In contexts in which to deliver the emergency maneuvers by hand is difficult, for example because in the absence of weight, mechanical devices such as the tested one could make a difference.
The results of the study will be presented at the end of August at the Congress of the European Cardiology Society in Madrid. In any case, as stated by Nathan Reynett, among the authors of the study, “it will be up to each space agency to decide whether to include automatic chest compression devices in its emergency medical kit. We know that there are other considerations in addition to effectiveness, such as weight and space limits ».