Now this just in from Boston EMS:
Boston EMS officials today are gladly supporting new American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines for CPR that prioritize chest compressions for bystanders trying to revive people whose hearts have stopped.

For everyone wondering where to learn the new technique, there’s this on the City of Boston’s Website:
Boston EMS offers numerous CPR Certification program to fit you or your organization’s needs. Call today to learn about one that’s right for you and to schedule a class 617-343-1125.

CommonHealth reported in August that patients planning to go to a Metro West Medical Center hospital — Framingham Union Hospital or Leonard Morse Hospital — could text to find out how long the ER waits were. Now Newton-Wellesley Hospital has called our attention to the new wait-time display on its Website (see above.) And by the end of October, it hopes to have an iPhone app up and running, along with a mobile version of its Website that will work on many smartphones.

I checked several other local hospitals’ home pages and saw no obvious reports on ER waits. But surely that time is coming soon. After all, if many restaurants now use apps to let patrons know how long they’ll have to wait for tables, shouldn’t hospitals be able to tell patients how long they’ll have to wait for their sutures?

As the book’s excellent Wikipedia entry explains, a gomer is “a patient who is frequently admitted with complicated but uninspiring and incurable conditions.” In other words, the bane of emergency staffs’ existence, not because they don’t want to help these patients, but because treating them tends to be so frustrating, fraught with pitfalls, and unlikely to bring any lasting good.

The gomer came instantly to my mind recently when a health advocate casually mentioned that she’d heard that hospital staffs are known to employ a new acronym: HONDA. It stands for:
Hypertensive
Obese
Non-compliant with diabetes medications
Diabetic
Asthmatic

Aha! I thought. The new gomer of our times, in this age of epidemic obesity and asthma and diabetes –diseases that are all but incurable, and frustrating, and that complicate treatment.

But so far, none of the Boston-based doctors I’ve asked have heard of the term. I called Dr. Stephen Bergman, who wrote “The House of God” under the pen name Samuel Shem. He now writes fulltime in Newton, and his most recent novel, “The Spirit of the Place,” won two national book awards. It is now next on my reading list.

So might Honda be the new gomer? “It’s wonderfully accurate for the modern issues,” he said, “but it has more the ring of selling a car than being of use in medicine.”

He expanded a bit: “Honda has all the humor and pizzazz of a reliable foreign car, whereas gomer has an outrageously accurate definition, which is: “a human being who has lost — often through age — what goes into being a human being.“

Point taken. By the way, The House of God is finally available in e-book form, in case you missed it. And if you’ve ever heard the term “Honda” in the ER, please share your experience in a comment. Maybe it’s a regional thing?

This from Cambridge EMS:

Cambridge EMS has seen survival rates of patients suffering sudden cardiac arrest more than double since implementing Compression-only CPR this year. The City’s results reflect the positive results reported today in a study published in The Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA).

Cambridge EMS, which consists of the Cambridge Fire Department, Cambridge Police Department, Cambridge Emergency Communications Department and Professional Ambulance (Pro EMS), is one of only a handful of EMS systems in Massachusetts to be doing Compression-only CPR (CCR).

“The use of Compression-only CPR has made a tremendous difference in Cambridge, allowing us to greatly improve the quality of patient care in our City and save more lives,” said Pro EMS Chief Executive Bill Mergendahl.

The best e-mailer I know, a Cape Cod octogenarian named Jack Alden, sends me a few gems a week — helpful hints, bits of wisdom, jokes that lighten my days. A couple of weeks ago, he passed along this University of Arizona video on a new form of CPR.

At the time, all I thought was that it looked strenuous — you have to do rapidfire compressions on the heart attack victim’s chest — but effective. And that it was nice that you didn’t have to encounter alien saliva by going mouth to mouth with the patient.

Now there’s a major new study out in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggesting that this new, simpler form of CPR can save more lives, in large part because it makes bystanders more willing to try to help. The journal’s video report on its study is here:

The move toward simplifying CPR is the lead story in the Harvard Health Letter this month. Evidence in favor of the simpler CPR is growing, it says, but there are some nuances:

So we’re all set: keep-it-simple, hands-only CPR is the way to go. Still, two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in July 2010 are a reminder not to oversimplify the situation. Over all, the results jibe perfectly with previous reports and further the case for taking a hands-only approach to cardiac arrest. The studies showed that people who received only chest compressions before EMTs arrived were just as likely to survive as those who received traditional CPR of compressions and breaths. But a finer analysis of the results of one of the studies showed that a small, but not insignificant, number of people did benefit from traditional CPR. They included people with “noncardiac” arrest, which usually means they had breathing problems before their hearts went haywire, as can happen with drug overdoses, asthma attacks, or near-drownings.

The Associated Press has a full feature on the study and the technique here. For tacking on the fridge, it included these steps:

_ If someone collapses, doesn’t respond to gentle shaking and stops normal breathing, call 911 or tell someone else to call.
_ With the victim on his back, place the heel of one of your hands atop the other on the middle of the victim’s breastbone.
_ Lock your elbows. With your shoulders over your hands, fall forward using your body weight. Press 100 times a minute. Think of the Bee Gees song “Staying Alive” for the tempo.
_ If an automated external defibrillator is available, switch it on and follow the instructions.
_ If not, continue chest compressions until paramedics arrive.

One final word. I love the “Staying Alive” tip, but it will only work if you’re old enough to know the song. Suggestions for more recent 100 beat-per-minute tunes welcome. Someone should market a CPR playlist…

Stem cell research can continue throughout appeal, court says – latimes.com “Government-funded research on embryonic stem cells can continue, a U.S. appellate court said Tuesday, while lawyers appeal a judge’s decision that found such research illegal.” (Los Angeles Times)

Phone More Popular Than Internet When Seeking Prices For Health Care : Shots – Health News Blog : NPR “Three-quarters of those who investigated prices ahead of time said they found what they needed. How did they do it? Most used old-fashioned techniques: 61 percent got on the phone. 47 percent asked in person. 22 percent tried the Internet or e-mail. 12 percent cited mail. 4 percent found what they needed in magazines or books.” (npr.org)

‘Emergency Bra’ doubles as safe-breathing mask – BostonHerald.com “The bra cups are lined with air filters she said would protect the wearer from smoke, debris from explosions, dust storms, volcanic ash and radioactive or biological terrorist attacks. “It is an always available personal protection device, but first and foremost it is a beautiful piece of lingerie,” she told reporters, adding that it is not meant to replace military-issued gas masks.” (Boston Herald)

Dear Colleagues,