Stanford Life Flight | Emergency Transport
Stanford Life Flight is the oldest hospital-based flight program in California. The flight crews are extensively trained and experienced in providing care to patients. Stanford Life Flight uses a team of pilots, flight nurses, and mechanics to maintain a high standard of care for these emergency patients.
Life flights are equipped with medical devices to aid patients in advanced emergency situations. The Stanford helicopter in particular is able to transport critically ill cardiac patients utilizing devices such as the intra-aortic balloon pump, used to support perfusion. In addition, the team wears night vision goggles and uses instrument-aided flight technologies which facilitate flying in dangerous weather conditions. Life flights are also equipped with catheters, ventilators, and liquid oxygen. Patients served by Stanford Life Flight are typically stroke, cardiac, or trauma cases transported to Stanford medicine, or neonatal and pediatric patients being transported to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.
When the BIE team visited Stanford Life Flight, Emily Otto, RN and flight nurse for the program, gave us a tour of the helicopter and an overview of the program. The BIE team toured the helicopter and interviewed Ms. Otto in order to identify unmet clinical needs. She showed the various design considerations and equipment aboard as well as outline the many challenges that the flight crew faced when responding to scene calls or providing inter-facility transportation. She described how drones, unmanned aerial vehicles, are becoming a more common obstacle for the Life Flight Helicopter. It is difficult to detect and avoid drones so drones actively interfere with the Life Flight team’s duties and may not be able to land if drones are near the site. Thus, there is a need for a mechanism that can deter drones.
Furthermore, Ms. Otto described how flying at altitude can change the physiology of the patients onboard which is especially problematic for patients with cardiac and respiratory problems. In particular, intra-aortic balloon pumps will inflate and deflate at different rates due to the change in cabin pressure. Other medical sensors may also be sensitive to air pressure and altitude changes, which would give inaccurate information about a patient’s health. If the medical equipment is unaffected by cabin pressure, medical personnel can worry about one less variable factor and focus on patient care. More specifically, two of the needs identified were that the balloon pump helium cycling is altitude independent and medical sensors are unaffected by altitude.
The BIE team was impressed with the resilience, courageousness, and medical expertise that it takes to be apart of the Life Flight Program. Stanford Life Flight has been saving lives for 30 years and it was a privilege to learn more about the program first-hand.
BIE Cohort: Jessica Hsueh, Katie, Priya Bhattacharjee, SARA SAMPSON,Matt, Karthik Prasad, Annika Carlson, and Michael Manguinao.
Special thanks to: Berkeley Bioengineering, UC Berkeley, and Stanford Life Flight.
