As the body drained from her body during a sweltering, 100-mile drive, Crystal Hiwalker miracles if her heart and lungs would have continued to function if the hospital staff had been able to administer her a transplant.
Because of the 2019 storm, it took 2.5 hours to drive from her little town of Lame Deer, Montana, to the superior stress facility in Montana.
Hiwalker’s ectopic pregnancy ruptured, and specialists at the Billings Clinic medical revived her and stopped the hemorrhage. They were shocked to learn that she survived after her heart stopped beating and that she lost almost all of her body and that she recovered without suffering any head injury.
The Montana State Trauma Care Committee, which works to reduce trauma incidents and increase care, eventually learned that the hospital carrying Hiwalker had passed close to two blood-stocking facilities. What if, according to council members, Hiwalker had access to that heart while she was traveling to Bennett.
The Montana Interfacility Blood Network, which they claim is the first system of its kind in the U.S., was born out of that revelation and problem, which led council members to form.
According to Gordon Riha, a pain physician at the Billings Clinic stress centre where Hiwalker was treated,” we sort of came up with the idea of having a heart handoff like driving through a fast-food restaurant drive-thru.” According to Riha, proper blood transfusions can save the day from death or a permanent head injury.
The system is aimed at remote patients, who , experience elevated rates , of horrific injuries and dying, said Alyssa Johnson, trauma program manager for the state of Montana.
” We have to get more creative. We do n’t have a blood bank on every corner, and we do n’t have a Level 1 trauma center on every corner”, Johnson said.
Since its launch in 2022, network leaders claim that the program has treated at least three patients. They anticipate that it will be used more in the future.
Hiwalker is excited about the program.
” I’m so glad that something like this got started, because it would save a lot of lives from where I live”, she said.
Hiwalker said she has heard about people bleeding to death after car crashes, gunshot wounds, and stabbings in her rural community. Johnson said work injuries, cancer, gastrointestinal problems, and childbirth can also cause serious bleeding.
A few months after Hiwalker’s brush with death, the Montana trauma committee began discussing the blood network. First, it , created a map , of 48 facilities with blood banks. Then, it , created guidelines , for how hospitals, blood banks, ambulances, and labs must communicate about, package, transport, document, and bill for the blood.
The network is used only during emergencies, which means there’s no time to test patients ‘ blood types. Therefore, it only uses type O red blood cells, which are safe to transfuse into most patients.
The hospital that provided the blood is in charge of billing the blood’s recipient’s insurance. According to Sadie Arnold, who oversees the blood bank at Billings Clinic, the cost typically ranges from several hundred dollars to more than a thousand dollars.
Arnold said blood must be stored in a lab and managed by professionals with specific degrees, clinical experience, and board certifications.
Some rural hospitals lack space for a lab or money to recruit these specialists, Arnold said. Or they may not need blood often enough to justify storing a product that can expire and — especially during the current national , blood shortage , — is needed elsewhere. Blood that has a shelf life of 42 days is used by the network.
Only trace amounts of blood may be on hand in rural hospitals. A rural Montanan who had severe bleeding firsthand witnessed that when he visited the closest hospital, which only had one type O blood unit, according to an a  report on the blood network. However, the new program allowed ambulance medics to collect more blood from a hospital on the halfway point of the 80-mile trip to the trauma hospital.
Rural patients with serious bleeding would typically be flown by medical helicopters or airplanes equipped for transfusions. But, as in Hiwalker’s case, flying can be impossible during bad weather. That can mean hours-long ambulance rides. Some towns in northeastern Montana, for example, are more than 250 miles away from the nearest advanced trauma center.
” This was truly designed for kind of that last-ditch effort”, Johnson said. When” we’re out of options, we’ve got to get the patient moving towards a larger center, and we ca n’t fly”.
According to Johnson, the ambulance may have to stop at the second hospital during the blood transfer. However, she claimed that during one incident, a police officer picked up the blood and delivered it to the ambulance at a highway exit.
Since many rural ambulance crews are staffed by emergency medical technicians, who are n’t permitted to do so, ambulances may also pick up a paramedic or nurse to administer the transfusion along the way.
Medics in other cities and states,  , including ones with rural areas, have started performing blood transfusions in , ambulances , and , helicopters, said Claudia Cohn, chief medical officer of the national Association for the Advancement of Blood &, Biotherapies.
She added that researchers are also interested in the use of frozen and freeze-dried blood products because they have longer shelf life and are more convenient in rural settings.
Johnson claimed that the Montana Interfacility Blood Network is the only program she is aware of that is specifically geared toward rural patients and involves ambulances taking blood from hospitals along their lines. She claimed that Oregon, one of the states with large rural areas, is showing an interest in the network.
Hiwalker claimed that getting a blood transfusion in the ambulance would have prevented her husband’s suffering as he rode in the ambulance with her and his near-death experience. She’s pleased that what she endured helped others.
___
© 2024 KFF Health News.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
