ThermoSuit Makes the TOP 5

January 7, 2010 thermosuit Leave a comment

MedicalDevice-Nework.com Announces 2009 Top 5 Devices

ThermoSuit by Life Recovery Systems makes the top 5 List.  Visit this link to read the entire article.

A body-cooling suit


Medical Design Excellence Award winner of 2009, the ThermoSuit System (TSS) from Life Recovery Systems (LRS), is a rapid non-invasive patient cooling device that reduces the risk of brain or heart damage. The company’s founders Robert Freedman Jr and Dr Robert Schock developed   the product after realising the existing treatment was inadequate and that rapid cooling could improve outcomes of critically ill patients.

The TSS is designed to be easily and quickly applied by nursing staff and can cool the core temperature of a cardiac arrest, stroke or heart attack victim to 32–34°C in 30 minutes or less. Once cooled the vital organs operate more slowly and need less oxygen, which reduces the chance of     brain or heat damage.

Strong clinical results, presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, demonstrated the positive impact that TSS will have on patients. “We are very happy to see such favourable clinical results in the centres using the ThermoSuit System so far,” says Dr Schock. “This is a fulfillment of the mission Dr Freedman and I have had since founding Life Recovery Systems.”

Categories: thermosuit

Back From The Brink!

December 16, 2009 thermosuit Leave a comment

Dr. Schock Demonstrates The ThermoSuit System

Compliments of:  Tina Pttaway

Every year, thousands of Canadians go into sudden cardiac arrest – their hearts simply stop beating.  The vast majority die.  But for more than a decade, hypothermia has been a proven method of treating patients whose hearts have stopped functioning.

If a heartbeat is reestablished, doctors can bring down the surviving patient’s body temperature by 5 degrees Celsius, and leave them in a chilled state for 24 hours.  Then, they slowly warm the patients to normal temperature, and bring them out of their induced coma.  What they are discovering is that patients who are chilled have far better outcomes than those patients who are revived from their cardiac arrest but not given access to hypothermic treatment; fewer patients are dying or suffering long-term irreversible damage such as brain damage.

In this documentary that I produced for CBC Radio’s The Current we meet Bill MacDonald, a cardiac arrest survivor, and his devoted friend Ferdy Rochas.  And we also meet the talented team of doctors and researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, and at Life Recovery Systems in New Jersey who are doing much to improve the outcomes of patients like Bill.

This documentary received the World Gold Medal at the 2009 New York Festivals in the Health and Medical category.

To listen to the documentary, visit the link and look for the audio button at the bottom of the article, just above the “Tweet This” link.  Click Here to listen to the documentary.

Visit ThermoSuit Online HERE

Good HouseKeeping Magazine Highlights The ThermoSuit System

December 9, 2009 thermosuit Leave a comment

Medical Advances and Breakthroughs

Courtesy:  Good HouseKeeping MagazineBy Beth Howard

Excerpt From  the  article “Medical Advances and Breakthroughs”; January 2010

Code Cool

When a person’s heart stops beating, no blood — and no oxygen — is going to the brain. Cooling the body a few degrees reduces the chance of damage, increasing the odds that the patient will return to a normal life. That’s why accident victims who live through a plunge into a freezing river can survive without neurological problems. But in a hospital, the processes that are used to cool bodies — blowing cold air on patients, or packing them in ice — can take hours, often too long to stop cell death and brain damage. It’s no wonder only a small fraction of cardiac arrest patients whose hearts are restarted regain all their abilities.

“If the stars hadn’t fallen in line on November 11, 2008,” as Cynthia Crawford, 57, puts it, she might not have been in that lucky group. A former psychiatric nurse in Baton Rouge, LA, and a mother of four, Crawford was at New Orleans’s Ochsner Medical Center for tests to see if she was a candidate for a heart transplant. A former smoker who suffered from congestive heart failure, Crawford was using a pacemaker and an implanted defibrillator to keep her heart pumping. But it was growing weak. When a medical resident found her slumped in the hospital garage, he quickly rushed her to the ER. You could call it being in the right place at the right time. Ochsner is one of only about 50 medical facilities that use a novel cooling therapy called the ThermoSuit. This inflatable cocoon-like device sprays the body with hundreds of icy-cold jets of water, reducing a patient’s temperature in about 20 to 40 minutes. “It’s faster than anything previously available,” says Paul McMullan Jr., M.D., an interventional cardiologist at Ochsner; that has translated into far lower rates of brain damage in patients at centers using the device. Crawford doesn’t remember much about the day her heart stopped. But when she woke up in the intensive care unit, she says, “I knew I’d been to hell and back. I learned that they’d had to shock me five times to get my heart going again.” After cooling her body, doctors implanted a heart pump to take over the work of her weakened heart, buying time while she waits for a new one from a donor. But she wouldn’t even be on the transplant list if she hadn’t been lucky enough to be placed in a ThermoSuit. “A nurse on the cardiac unit told me that somebody who comes in like I did usually ends up in a long-term-care facility,” says Crawford. Instead, she has “more energy than ever.” And while the battery for the pump, carried in a vest, is a “little cumbersome,” says Crawford, it hasn’t slowed her down. “I go everywhere — especially if it involves shopping.

ThermoSuit Improves Recovery Odds For Osceola Regional Heart Attack Patients

November 19, 2009 thermosuit Leave a comment

Giving Patients an Icy Reception

Courtsey:  Orlando Medical News, LYNNE JETER

Giving Patients an Icy Reception | Brian Baxter, Paul McMullan, ThermoSuit, Life Recovery Systems, Osceola Regional Medical Center

ThermoSuit body-cooling system shown inflated above.

Thermosuit® Improves Recovery Odds for Osceola Regional Heart Attack Patients

Kissimmee— Because it could improve their chances of a full recovery, the emergency room staff at Osceola Regional Medical Center doesn’t mind giving heart attack patients an icy reception.
When it was introduced in August, Osceola Regional Medical Center became the first hospital in Florida to use the ThermoSuit® Body Cooling System, the only device using cold water immersion to rapidly lower patient temperature. The rapid cooling system has been proven to improve recovery by minimizing brain and tissue damage for cardiac arrest patients.
“There’s substantial research demonstrating that when a patient survives cardiac arrest, neurological recovery can be significantly improved by decreasing the body temperature and maintaining a reduced temperature for 24 hours,” explained Brian Baxter, MD, medical director of the Emergency Department for Osceola Regional. “The ThermoSuit allows us to advance the standard of care for cardiac arrest patients who have spontaneous return of circulation and to reduce their neurological impairment.”
ThermoSuit is used only with patients who have been successfully resuscitated after their heart has stopped.
Here’s how it works: when a heart attack patient arrives at Osceola Regional, the hospital initiates an ICE Alert. If appropriate, the patient is placed in the ThermoSuit, a non-invasive, portable cooling system that resembles a plastic raft. The FDA-approved device drops the body’s core temperature to between 32 and 34 degrees Celsius in roughly 20 minutes. When cooled, vital organs operate more slowly and require less oxygen, reducing the potential for permanent damage.
Once inside the suit, the patient is covered with a sheet; the system continuously pumps a thin film of ice around the patient’s body. Then, “a probe is placed in the patient’s esophagus to measure their core temperature,” said Baxter. “The device stops cooling at a certain temperature to prevent the patient from becoming too hypothermic. We then monitor the patient’s temperature for the next 24 hours as well as all of their other vitals.”
Once cooling is completed, the ThermoSuit is removed and the patient may receive additional treatments, such as angioplasty or stents.
Osceola Regional staff members completed specialized training before the hospital launched the ThermoSuit program. The medical center also collaborated with emergency medical service agencies in Kissimmee, St. Cloud and Osceola County to ensure a smooth transition between emergency transport and Osceola Regional.
“Once a cardiac patient has been resuscitated, we can immediately begin the cooling process,” said Baxter.
Of the other hospitals using other cooling methods for heart attack patients, most employ systems that have drawbacks. For example, external cooling techniques—namely ice packs and cooling blankets—take hours to decrease body temperature. In the meantime, brain cells and neurons are lost, dramatically diminishing a patient’s chances of returning to normal. Also, invasive cooling methods, such as endovascular cooling catheters and cold saline, tend to have complications.
Research has suggested that cooling the temperature of some cardiac arrest patients before coronary reperfusion could result in a significant reduction in the amount of injury the heart sustains.
Since rolling out the ThermoSuit program, feedback from heart attack patients and their families has been overwhelming positive, said Baxter. “Two of the three ThermoSuit patients have had full recovery after cardiac arrest and another is improving,” he said.
ThermoSuit is made by Life Recovery Systems of Waldwick NJ. BusinessWeek reported the price tag of $1,600 for the disposable pump, and $29,000 for the pump itself.
“The ThermoSuit System is the most advanced technology to treat cardiac arrest patients today,” said Paul McMullan, MD, interventional cardiologist at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, La., which adopted its use last year. “It cools a patient in minutes, not hours like similar technologies currently available, when time is of the essence.”
McMullan pointed to a 50-year-old Ochsner cardiology patient who was pronounced dead after suffering a heart attack in 2008.  He was immediately resuscitated at the scene, suffered another heart attack, and was routed to Ochsner’s ER. After “cooling off” with the ThermoSuit,he recovered and was doing well soon after. His ejection fraction (EF), which was at 5 percent after his cardiac episodes, had returned to 35 percent.
Robert Freedman, MD, of Alexandria, La., invented ThermoSuit, which received a 2009 Medical Design Excellence Award.
“ThermoSuit will become the new standard of care for cardiac arrest patients,” said Baxter. “It fits with Osceola Regional and the Central Florida Cardiac & Vascular Institute.”

Categories: Uncategorized

Osceola Regional Medical Center Uses ThermoSuit

September 21, 2009 thermosuit Leave a comment

  OSCEOLA REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER FIRST HOSPITAL IN FLORIDA TO USE THERMOSUIT® FOR HEART ATTACK PATIENTS KISSIMMEE, FL, — As Emergency Department Medical Director for Osceola Regional Medical Center, Brian Baxter, MD, FACEP, doesn’t mind giving heart attack patients an icy reception—if it means improving their chances of a full recovery.

Dr. Baxter is enthusiastic about the Center’s new ThermoSuit® System, introduced in August of this year. “The ThermoSuit allows us to advance the standard of care for cardiac arrest patients who have spontaneous return of circulation and to reduce their neurological impairment,” he said. The technology is used only with patients who have been successfully resuscitated after their heart has stopped.

When a cardiac arrest patient arrives at Osceola Regional, the hospital initiates an ICE Alert. If deemed appropriate, the patient is placed in the ThermoSuit, a non-invasive, portable cooling system that resembles a plastic raft. The FDA-approved device drops the body’s core temperature to between 32 and 34 degrees Celsius within 10 to 30 minutes. Once inside the suit, the patient is covered with a sheet and the system continuously pumps a thin film of ice around the patient’s body. While this is happening, “A probe is placed in the patient’s esophagus to measure their core temperature. The device stops cooling at a certain temperature to prevent the patient from becoming too hypothermic. We then monitor the patient’s temperature for the next 24 hours as well as all of their other vitals,” explained Dr. Baxter.

This rapid cooling improves recovery by minimizing brain and tissue damage. “There is substantial research demonstrating that when a patient survives cardiac arrest, neurological recovery can be significantly improved by decreasing the body temperature and maintaining a reduced temperature for 24 hours,” Dr. Baxter said. Once cooling is completed, the ThermoSuit is removed and the patient may receive additional treatments such as stents or angioplasty. Before launching the ThermoSuit program, Osceola Regional staff members underwent specialized training. The hospital also collaborated with emergency medical service agencies in Kissimmee, St. Cloud and Osceola County to ensure a smooth transition between emergency transport and the Medical Center.

“Once a cardiac patient has been resuscitated, we can immediately begin the cooling process,” Dr. Baxter commented. Many hospitals use other cooling methods, but these have drawbacks. For example, external cooling techniques such as ice packs and cooling blankets, take hours to decrease body temperature. In the meantime, brain cells and neurons are lost, dramatically diminishing a patient’s chances of returning to normal. And invasive cooling methods, such as endovascular cooling catheters and cold saline, tend to have complications.

In the short time since Osceola Regional launched the program, the results have been positive. According to Dr. Baxter, “Two of the three ThermoSuit patients have had full recovery after cardiac arrest and another is improving.” Currently, Osceola Regional is the only hospital in Florida using this technology. “ThermoSuit is the new standard of care for cardiac arrest patients. It fits with Osceola Regional and the Central Florida Cardiac & Vascular Institute,” Dr. Baxter noted.

# # #

About Osceola Regional Medical Center: Osceola Regional Medical Center is a state-of-the-art hospital offering services which include: a 24-hour Emergency Department; 24-hour Obstetrician (OB) Coverage/Baby Suites Maternity Unit; Level II Neonatal Intensive Care Unit; Pediatrics; Accredited Chest Pain Center; Certified Primary Stroke Center; Orthopedic and Spine Center; Wound Healing Center; and the Kissimmee Physical Therapy Center. Also included are complete diagnostic, imaging and testing services in the Osceola Imaging Center and the Breast Care Center. The hospital features a premier multi-million dollar, four-story cardiac care tower housing the Central Florida Cardiac & Vascular Institute. The Institute offers advanced comprehensive cardiac care from diagnostics and treatment, including open-heart and vascular surgery to cardiac rehabilitation. Many of the Institute’s surgeons specialize in minimally invasive heart valve surgeries. Visit www.HeartHappensHere.com for more information.

Categories: Uncategorized

Understanding Therapeutic Hypothermia

September 17, 2009 thermosuit Leave a comment

Check out this blog if you would like to learn and understand the value of Therapeutic Hypothermia

Paramedicine 101, thank you for sharing such important information!  http://paramedicine101.blogspot.com/2009/09/induced-hypothermia-part-v.html

Therapeutic Hypothermia After Cardiac Arrest

September 8, 2009 thermosuit Leave a comment

Therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest:  Unintentional overcooling is common using ice packs and conventional cooling blankets

Courtesy of:   Acute Care Inc. Posted on September 5, 2009 by coptermedic From PubMed:

OBJECTIVES: Although therapeutic hypothermia for cardiac arrest survivors has been shown to improve neurologically intact survival, optimal methods to ensure controlled induction and maintenance of cooling are not clearly established.

Precise temperature control is important to evaluate because unintentional overcooling below the consensus target range of 32-34 degrees C may place the patient at risk for serious complications. We sought to measure the prevalence of overcooling (<32 degrees C) in postarrest survivors receiving primarily noninvasive cooling.

DESIGN: Retrospective chart review of postarrest patients.

SETTING: Three large teaching hospitals.

PATIENTS: Cardiac arrest survivors receiving therapeutic hypothermia.

INTERVENTIONS: Charts were reviewed if primarily surface cooling was used with a target temperature goal between 32 degrees C and 34 degrees C.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Of the 32 cases reviewed, overcooling lasting for >1 hr was identified as follows: 20 of 32 patients (63%) reached temperatures of <32 degrees C, 9 of 32 (28%) reached temperatures of <31 degrees C, and 4 of 32 (13%) reached temperatures of <30 degrees C. Of those with overcooling of <32 degrees C, 6 of 20 (30%) survived to hospital discharge, whereas of those without overcooling, 7 of 12 (58%) survived to hospital discharge (p = not significant). CONCLUSIONS: The majority of the cases reviewed demonstrated unintentional overcooling below target temperature. Improved mechanisms for temperature control are required to prevent potentially deleterious complications of more profound hypothermia.

Video Testimonial

August 28, 2009 thermosuit Leave a comment

Watch what people are saying about ThermoSuit!

Categories: Uncategorized

CentraState uses new body cooling device on first emergency patient

August 21, 2009 thermosuit Leave a comment

Centra State ThermoSuitTechnology helps recovery of cardiac arrest patients

CentraState’s Emergency Department (ED) in Freehold Township now offers a new rapid, body-cooling device for cardiac arrest patients to help them recover with minimal or no damage to the brain. Clinicians in the ED successfully used the device for the first time earlier this month on a 55-year-old male patient.

The emergency department is the first in New Jersey using the new ThermoSuit by Life Recovery Systems. Clinicians use the system to rapidly decrease a patient’s core temperature to around 92 degrees which slows blood flow to the heart and brain. “When the body is cooled down, the heart and brain require less oxygen to continue functioning,” says M. Michael Jones, MD, chair, Emergency Services, CentraState Medical Center. “This helps prevent further damage to the brain and creates better opportunity for healing with favorable outcomes.”

At CentraState, the ThermoSuit is used for patients after they’ve experienced cardiac arrest and have been revived, but are not responsive. Cardiac arrest is a condition in which the heart stops pumping blood as a result of irregular heart rhythms. According to the American Heart Association, 95 percent of people who suffer from cardiac arrest outside of a medical facility die before they reach the hospital.

The device is an inflatable pool that wraps around a patient’s body and then constantly pumps ice water across the body to remove surface heat, decreasing the body’s temperature quickly. Any time throughout the process, CPR and/or a defibrillator can be used if needed without disruption of the cooling. The “suit” is computer controlled and shuts down once the target temperature is reached. To maintain hypothermia, a simple iced saline infusion is used, and a patient can stay cold for around 24 hours.

The ThermoSuit can obtain the desired temperature between 93 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit in only 27 minutes. Past cooling methods took up to two hours and 43

minutes. The faster a hypothermic state is reached, the greater chance there is of preventing permanent damage to the heart and brain.

The non-invasive procedure has no reported complications and is the top in its category for reducing core body temperature.

Patient satisfaction at CentraState’s Emergency Department has ranked at the 96th percentile or higher for seven of the last eight quarters, according to a national patient satisfaction measurement firm. CentraState has one of the busiest emergency departments in Central new Jersey, caring for more than 60,000 patients per year.

— ANDY LAGOMARSINO, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The FASTEST & SAFEST Patient Cooling System

August 12, 2009 thermosuit Leave a comment

in use and transportThe ThermoSuit® Advantage

Easy to Use:  The system is portable and easy to set up and initiate by the nursing staff. On-screen graphics display the current status of the system and the progress of the cooling process. When finished, the suit is discarded.

Fast:  In a matter of minutes, the entire body is cooled to the optimal target temperature.  Non-Invasive Surface cooling is achieved by circulating ice water directly over the patient’s skin.

Maximum Control:  Level control valve automatically monitors fluid level and purges coolant when target temperature is achieved.

Mistake-Free:  Automatic safety checks are an integral part of the design to eliminate errors, and the possibility of over-cooling.  Temperature probe monitors and controls the patient’s temperature during the entire cooling process.

No Bed Sores:  Patients are not tied to the system. The patented inner sling internal support surface inflates to surround and cradle the patient’s body.

Easy Access to Patient:  Removable top sheet contains integrated flow channels and allows access to the patient during the cooling process.

No Hospital Should be Without The ThermoSuit® System!

Categories: Patient Cooling