Mr Simon Gould1
1LifeVac Australia, Belmont, Australia
Biography:
Owner/director of LifeVac Australia, Medics for Life, and a RACGP-accredited clinical educator. Simon holds qualifications in pre-hospital emergency care (para-medical science), Education Training and Assessment. Roles include Advanced Care Paramedic, Operations Manager GP Access After Hours, and primary care clinical educator for over 25 years in advanced resuscitation and triage.
Abstract:
Unrelieved upper airway obstruction remains a significant risk especially those at risk due to illness, age, isolation, and medical condition. With a 4-minute treatment window, it remains a time-critical challenge for community paramedical services and first responders, particularly in non-metropolitan areas.
Since entering the market over a decade ago, evidenced suction-based airway clearance devices e.g. the novel LifeVac® airway clearance device (despite over 3400 documented successful saves with no harm all after first aid has failed, despite the promised efficacy of first aid), have been the target of a persistent, unfounded, false narrative that has impeded rapid and widespread adoption, impeding their life-saving potential, despite evidenced approval by medical device regulators using the more rigorous risk management framework over good practice consensus. Resistance based on speculative arguments that have generated doubt and suspicion in the minds of potential users and health professionals. While claiming the motivation of “safety and efficacy”, it is obvious that other factors are at play. This failure by (particularly) resuscitation organisations could be undesigned, however, it is more likely to be a deliberate attempt to protect a confused position, and a poor evidence base. The consequences have included the construction of artificially delaying barriers to the rapid and widespread adoption of evidenced devices, (costing innumerable lives when first aid measures have and do fail) and have also fuelled an illegal market in copycat, dangerous, untested devices, due to the lack of specificity in reviews. These devices do have an important role in pre-hospital emergency care.