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The Salt Lake City Fire Department is trying out a new and unique hand-held ECG (electrocardiogram) device that can routinely monitor the hearts of firefighters.
The little device, not much bigger than the palm of my hand, can tell a lot about a firefighter's heart under stress.
At Station No. 2, firefighters were monitoring the rhythm and rates of their hearts by simply touching a little device held in the hand.
It's a portable ECG that doesn't need wire leads or gels that takes personal heart readings anytime, anyplace.
Steven Joyce, medical director for the Salt Lake City Fire Department, says, "It has great application because you don't have to strip the patient down to get the leads on. It doesn't take much time to put your fingers on here. As you noticed, it's only a 30 second procedure."
With only two thumbs on two dry electrodes, the device reads, records and analyzes the user's ECG.
In the field, firefighters come in contact with smoke and chemicals. Their protective gear and clothing are heavy. The body often overheats, especially on hot summer days. Joyce says since the Rehab Unit monitors everyone on a working fire at periodic intervals, the hand-held ECG is an ideal tool. "This is one of the devices we think might be helpful when someone comes in and their pulse is abnormally high, low or irregular," Joyce says.
The device also has applications in medical clinics, giving physicians or health care workers a quick snapshot of a patient's heart.
It could be used in search and rescue, say when someone is trapped in a collapsed building or some other structure. Joyce says, "We also have to economize on size and weight because everything has to be taken down into the structure to reach the patient rather than bringing the patient out."
The device can also be used at home to monitor arrhythmias. The data could be routinely downloaded into a computer and sent as an e-mail attachment to the patient's physician.
E-mail: eyeates@ksl.com