NIH grants 1.5M to fund device study for cardiac arrest resuscitation

Advanced Circulatory Systems has received an additional $1.5 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue testing two devices used in combination on those who experience cardiac arrest outside a hospital.

The testing study is needed because of the low survival rates for cardiac arrest; the national average for surviving such a cardiac arrest that occurs outside a hospital setting is only one in twenty, according to the Minneapolis-based Advanced Circulatory.  

The NIH funding will be used to increase enrollment in the six-site study, which involves the testing of the ResQPump an active compression/decompression device, in combination with the ResQPOD, a device used to increase blood flow to the heart and brain during CPR in use in the U.S.

Advanced Circulatory said the current NIH-funded study is the first U.S. randomized study to assess results of its ResQPump and ResQPOD used together and comparing results when CPR is performed without the devices. The ResQPump has been tested and is currently in use in Europe.  

The six sites involved in the study include Minneapolis; St. Paul, Minn.; Whatcom County, Wash.; Oshkosh, Wis.; suburban Detroit, including parts of Oakland and Macomb counties, Mich.; and Livingston County, Mich., which includes the city of Ann Arbor.

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