Bringing the ICU to You

University of Michigan Survival Flight transports a lot of very sick patients, so having a ventilator on board their aircraft that does the same kinds of things an actual ICU ventilator can do is important.

For the past year, Survival Flight has had just that in the HAMILTON-T1 transport ventilator from Hamilton Medical. “We transport a lot of really sick patients who need some pretty aggressive and out-of-the-ordinary ventilator settings,” says Paul Mazurek, educational nurse coordinator for Survival Flight. “The HAMILTON-T1 actually was the one ventilator we found that provided that.”

The HAMILTON-T1 is designed to ventilate the adult or pediatric ICU patient at any place around the world. With its compact size of less than 6.5 kg, built-in batteries with up to 9.5 hours operating time, batteries that are hot swappable, 8.4” color touch screen and its high-performance turbine, this ICU ventilator can accompany patients within the hospital and between hospitals, whether on the ground or in the air. Its integrated high-performing NIV capabilities add state-of-the-art therapy options for any transport situation.

“We do a lot of ICU interhospital transports, and our patients are really sick ICU patients whom no one else can move” says Mazurek. “Having the ability to have the same features and do the same things that an ICU ventilator can do is really advantageous. There’s a lot of continuous research in the area of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and the things that we’re able to do now at the bedside of a referring hospital are the same things our intensivists do here when we get them back to U of M, so being able to provide that kind of care early on with the equipment that we have is definitely a plus.”

Mazurek also likes the Adaptive Support Ventilation (ASV) feature that’s unique to Hamilton Medical ventilators. This intelligent ASV mode guarantees that the patient receives set minute ventilation, whether spontaneously breathing or mechanically ventilated, by the dynamic calculation of optimal breathing patterns. ASV automatically fine-tunes settings to the patient’s needs at the lowest possible pressures. It applies lung-protective strategy rules, promotes faster recovery and helps to reduce the incidence of false alarms.

To top things off, Mazurek says Hamilton Medical’s customer service is top notch. “Their customer service has been phenomenal. We’ve bought products before where as soon as you buy the products you can’t get support to save your life, but that’s not the case with Hamilton.”

Visit www.hamilton-medical.com.