New EMS Partnership Will Save Lives in Fatal Bleeding and Emergency Incidents
Trevor Phipps
In a life-or-death situation, every second counts once a first responder arrives to the scene, especially in our rural area where transports to emergency centers and hospitals takes longer.
The effort to address this outright crisis scenario has gained momentum and has become the subject of many community forums in recent months.
Over a year ago, the city of Colorado Springs launched a blood transfusion program in which patients could receive a needed infusion before they could arrive at the hospital
This need has approached a crisis stage in more rural areas, where accident victims may be located further from hospitals. In fact, Teller County is a prime example.
But the task of placing blood inside the vehicles of first responders isn’t covered by insurance companies. As a result, funding for this vital need has turned into a community-wide push.
Now, this blood transfusion pursuit is reaching the finish line.
Last April, UCHealth announced that through a partnership with the Ute Pass Regional Health Service District (UPRHSD) (and several local doors), the lifesaving “whole blood” program would launch in Teller County and other areas in the region this summer. On June 25, the UCHealth Pikes Peak Regional Hospital in Woodland Park held an event to officially announce the implementation of the new program that will help save lives in the entire UPRHSD district that covers all of Teller County and parts of Park, Douglas and El Paso Counties.
Now, local first responders will have the ability to help patients who are losing blood before they can make it to the hospital. According to UCHealth emergency medical physician and Colorado Springs Fire Department Medical Director Dr. Matt Angelidis, this new capability will most likely save many lives.
“Most people don’t know this, but the number one reason why people die under the age of 46 is hemorrhagic shock (loss of blood),” Angelidis said. “About 40 percent of the patients who bleed to death do so before they get to one of our hospitals. That 40 percent is why we are here today.”
Since the system has been implemented in Colorado Springs, dozens of lives have been saved by first responders giving transfusions on the way to a hospital. And experts say it will be even more useful in more rural areas, such as the Ute Pass Region.
“We are approximately a year into our program in Colorado Springs, and I’m really excited to announce that we have transfused over 100 units of blood with north of 80 survivors,” Angelidis said. “That is one patient every 72 hours. We know that that time is even more valuable when we push out to rural areas like Teller-Park.”
The program that is now up and running requires first responders from UPRHSD to go to UCHealth Pikes Peak Regional Hospital once a week and fill up a portable container with whole blood. The blood then stays cold until it is needed for a transfusion. It is then heated up before it is given to a patient.
Over the past few months, local first responders have spent time training on proper procedures of giving blood transfusions inside the ambulance. “This program represents a major leap forward in pre-hospital care,” UPRHSD Education Captain Katie Leland said. “Our crews have trained extensively to ensure that whole blood administration is done safely, effectively, and with the highest standard of care. We’re proud to bring this level of critical intervention to our community, especially in rural areas where every minute truly matters.”
The Need for Blood Transfusions
The idea of bringing a mobile, whole blood transfusion program to the Pikes Peak region first came about due to the military and combat experience of Dr. Angelidis and Dr. Sean Keenan of UCHealth, who also serves as the Teller County EMS Medical Director. After seeing how well transfusions worked in the battlefield, the two realized that a similar program could be launched in Colorado.
According to Dr. Keenan, over the past few decades blood transfusions were always something that was only conducted at the hospital. Through the years, whole blood was then placed in helicopters that had flight nurses and paramedics that could conduct transfusions before the patient landed at the hospital.
But after seeing it conducted on the battlefield, Keenan and Angelidis both realized that blood transfusions didn’t need to be carried out by someone with a doctorate or advanced nursing degree. According to Keenan, they soon started to see cases proving that their “very capable” paramedics could give whole blood transfusions to patients safely and much sooner.
In Teller County, some patients are located far away from the closest hospital. And Keenan said that about a third of the time when there is an emergency, the helicopters can’t make it due to not being able to fly at night or inclement weather.
“Forty percent of the time, whole blood transfusions are used in medical cases,” Keenan said. “If somebody, for instance was vomiting blood or passing blood through their colon, that’s a pretty common thing that we see, and we see it quite a bit up here. And then 60 percent of the time transfusions are used in trauma. That is going to be accidents, car accidents, ATV accidents, accidental gun shots that type of thing. When our paramedics get there, they intuitively know when somebody is bleeding to death, they just didn’t have a tool to address it.”
Teller County joins Colorado Springs and other rural counties in Colorado such as Clear Creek and Grand Counties in equipping their first responders with whole blood transfusion capabilities.
