Search

As many as 95% of the personnel delivering emergency ambulance service in some areas of the United States are volunteers. To determine if such personnel can provide effective advanced life-support, the Western Pennsylvania Regional Medical Program conducted a project that trained 15 volunteer ambulance people in these techniques. Our findings indicate advanced life-support can be provided without biomedical telemetry systems if the operation has intensive medical supervision, enthusiastic support from the sponsoring agency, endorsement by the local municipal government and personnel dedicated to providing high level service.

As space mission durations increase and objectives became more diverse, life support equipment must also increase in capacity and diversity. Storage of expendable materials such as oxygen, water, and food needed to support life in space rapidly becomes prohibitively heavy and bulky for longer missions and larger crew sizes. Further, disposal of large quantities of wastes will be required. Thus, the recovery of useful materials by waste regeneration is a major consideration in advanced life support system development.

Thermal control in advanced integrated life support system design to accommodate four-man crew on one-year Earth orbit mission

Our experience with ambulance design and equipment since the late 1950’s indicates the following: 1. The 1968 National Research Council recommendations were able to be implemented at the local level in Pittsburgh through the Freedom House ambulance project. 2. Existing assembly line vehicles could be transformed into mobile ICU1s at relatively low cost. 3. The equipment recommended and described has proved valuable in actual practice. Upgrading of existing ambulances should be in this order of importance: add portable and stationary life support equipment for basic life support; provide space around stretcher to provide life support; add advanced life support physicians-paramedics kit(s); improve riding quality and vehicle Performance; reduce cost. No presently available vehicle modification in the U.S.A. is ideal for meeting all medical requirements.