SPEAR in action
SPEAR refers to Specialist Percutaneous Emergency Aortic Resuscitation, an intervention performed in cardiac arrest patients. It involves inserting a needle into the patient’s artery in the groin to monitor blood pressure.
SPEAR provides real-time feedback regarding the quality of CPR being delivered to ensure adequate blood supply to the patient’s brain and heart.
Dr Jon Barratt says: “It’s an advanced technique and the most technically demanding procedure we carry out, as patients in cardiac arrest would be receiving chest compressions when the needles are inserted.”
The EAAA Research Audit Innovation and Development Group (RAID) specialise in the understanding of out of hospital medical cardiac arrest (OHCA), and SPEAR is a clinical development which helps our understanding. The development of SPEAR across all of our clinical teams has allowed us to publish new research on the understanding of OHCA.
This video has been produced as a clinical educational tool to demonstrate the SPEAR procedure in a pre-hospital emergency setting by EAAA clinicians.
Read more in The Journal of Vascular Access - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/11297298241242157