Automatic external defibrillator provided by unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) in Greater Paris: A real world-based simulation

Clément Derkenne; Daniel Jost; Albane Miron De L'Espinay; Pascal Corpet; Benoit Frattini; Vivien Hong; Frédéric Lemoine; Romain Jouffroy; Florian Roquet; Eloi Marijon; Frankie Beganton; Olivier Stibbe; Sabine Lemoine; Marina Salome; Romain Kedzierewicz; Bertrand Prunet; Paris Fire Brigade Cardiac Arrest Task Force

doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2021.03.012

Automatic external defibrillator provided by unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) in Greater Paris: A real world-based simulation

Resuscitation. 2021 May:162:259-265. doi: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2021.03.012. Epub 2021 Mar 22.

Authors

Clément Derkenne¹, Daniel Jost², Albane Miron De L'Espinay³, Pascal Corpet⁴, Benoit Frattini³, Vivien Hong³, Frédéric Lemoine³, Romain Jouffroy³, Florian Roquet⁵, Eloi Marijon⁶, Frankie Beganton⁷, Olivier Stibbe³, Sabine Lemoine³, Marina Salome³, Romain Kedzierewicz³, Bertrand Prunet⁸; Paris Fire Brigade Cardiac Arrest Task Force³

Affiliations

¹ Emergency Medical Department, Paris Fire Brigade, 1, Place Jules Renard, 75017 Paris, France. Electronic address: clement.derkenne@pompiersparis.fr.
² Emergency Medical Department, Paris Fire Brigade, 1, Place Jules Renard, 75017 Paris, France; Sudden Death Expertise Center, Hôpital Pompidou, 1, Rue Leblanc, 75015 Paris, France.
³ Emergency Medical Department, Paris Fire Brigade, 1, Place Jules Renard, 75017 Paris, France.
⁴ Bayes Impact, 24, Boulevard Saint Denis, 75010, Paris, France.
⁵ European Georges Pompidou Hospital, Critical Care Department, 1, Rue Leblanc, 75015 Paris, France; INSERM 1153 Unit, Hôpital St Louis 1, Avenue Claude Vellefaux, 75010 Paris, France.
⁶ Université de Paris, Centre de Recherche Cardiovasculaire de Paris, INSERM, 1, Rue Leblanc, 75015 Paris, France; European Georges Pompidou Hospital, Cardiology Department, 1, Rue Leblanc, 75015 Paris, France; Paris-Sudden Death Expertise Center, Paris, 1, Rue Leblanc, 75015 Paris, France.
⁷ Université de Paris, Centre de Recherche Cardiovasculaire de Paris, INSERM, 1, Rue Leblanc, 75015 Paris, France; Paris-Sudden Death Expertise Center, Paris, 1, Rue Leblanc, 75015 Paris, France.
⁸ Emergency Medical Department, Paris Fire Brigade, 1, Place Jules Renard, 75017 Paris, France; French Military Health Service, Val de Grâce Military Academy, 1, Place Alphonse Laveran, 75005 Paris, France.

PMID: 33766669
DOI: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2021.03.012

Abstract

Aim: To reduce the delay in defibrillation of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients, recent publications have shown that drones equipped with an automatic external defibrillator (AED) appear to be effective in sparsely populated areas. To study the effectiveness of AED-drones in high-density urban areas, we developed an algorithm based on emergency dispatch parameters for the rate and detection speed of cardiac arrests and technical and meteorological parameters.

Methods: We ran a numerical simulation to compare the actual time required by the Basic Life Support team (BLSt) for OHCA patients in Greater Paris in 2017 to the time required by an AED-drone. Endpoints were the proportion of patients with "AED-drone first" and the defibrillation time gained. We built an open-source website (https://airborne-aed.org/) to allow modelling by modifying one or more parameters and to help other teams model their own OHCA data.

Results: Of 3014 OHCA patients, 72.2 ± 0.7% were in the "no drone flight" group, 25.8 ± 0.2% in the "AED-drone first" group, and 2.1 ± 0.2% in the "BLSt-drone first" group. When a drone flight was authorized, it arrived an average 190 s before BLSt in 93% of cases. The possibility of flying the drone during the aeronautical night improved the results of the "AED-drone first" group the most (+60%).

Conclusions: In our very high-density urban model, at most 26% of OHCA patients received an AED from an AED-drone before BLSt. The flexible parameters of our website model allows evaluation of the impact of each choice and concrete implementation of the AED-drone.

Keywords: Defibrillation; Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest; Simulation; Unmanned aerial vehicles.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation*
Defibrillators
Electric Countershock
Emergency Medical Services*
Humans
Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest* / therapy
Paris