What if you woke up tomorrow and learned that your grandmother had been kidnapped overnight by a couple of strangers, thrown in a white van, and taken to a distant warehouse where she spent the subsequent forty-five minutes being tortured before finally succumbing to her death?
Where she was repeatedly beaten in the chest, where a tube was shoved down her throat, where she was tasered with high voltage, where a metal drill was bored into her leg, where she was stabbed multiple times in the neck, arms, and groin?
As far-fetched as this scenario may seem, these theatrics are played out every day in the United States and around the world. Every year a third of a million people are transported to hospitals via ambulance for cardiac arrest. Usually, the chest compressions are initiated in the field. Either an intravenous line is started by the paramedics, often in the antecubital fossa of the elbow, or if there is nowhere to insert an IV, an intraosseous line is drilled into the proximal tibia in the leg. If the patient is in ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia, they are electrically shocked at 200 joules. If the patient has good anatomy and is transported by an experienced paramedic, they are endotracheally intubated and given oxygen via a bag valve mask.
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