Advanced Life Support

Image via Wikipedia

Advanced Life Support,Tiger Woods Life Support:An unidentified woman taken from Tiger Woods’ home is said to be listed as an Advanced Life Support patient.

But first, what is Advanced Life Support?

In the USA, Advanced, Intermediate and Paramedic level services are known collectively as Advanced Life Support.

Advanced Life Support is a treatment consensus for cardiopulmonary resuscitation in cardiac arrest and related medical problems. It is practiced by in-hospital cardiac arrest teams, which generally consist of junior doctors from various specialties (anesthetics, general or internal medicine).

A patient undergoing ALS is treated by an emergency medical technician (EMT), who is capable of performing advanced life support skills as either an EMT-A (Advanced), EMT-I (Intermediate) or an EMT-P (Paramedic), commonly referred to simply as a paramedic or medic.

The EMT may perform advanced procedures and skills on the patient including;

* Cardiac monitoring
* Cardiac defibrillation
* Transcutaneous pacing
* Intravenous cannulation (IV)
* Iinterosseous (IO) access and intraosseous infusion
* Surgical cricothyrotomy
* Needle cricothyrotomy
* Needle decompression of tension pneumothorax