Abstract

COLORADO, Osmani; PORTELA, Alejandro Ernesto  and  FOLGUERAS, José. TRANSTHORACIC IMPEDANCE THRESHOLD FOR PATIENT DETECTION DURING DEFIBRILLATION. uct [online]. 2007, vol.11, n.44, pp.129-134. ISSN 2542-3401.

The value of transthoracic impedance for defibrillation is commonly employed by impedance compensation algorithms in order to gtailorh the discharge for each patient. The upper limit reported for the impedance may be exceeded if no conductive gel is used as an interface between paddles and skin. The present work is aimed to determining a maximum acceptable value when measured on a patient so that it can guarantee the discharge even if no gel is used and also to make a comparison between adult and pediatric paddles applying gel or not. The impedance of 27 volunteers was measured applying gel or not, finding that the value measured with pediatric paddles was 1,95 ± 0,61 times greater than the value measured with pediatric paddles, when no gel was applied. The influence of applying gel was significantly greater in men and particularly in hirsute individuals. A similar result was achieved when reducing the area of pediatric paddles 3,7 times by employing a pediatric adapter. Following these results, a top 400 Ω value was selected for patient detection. Results suggest that applying no gel to pediatric paddles is equivalent to the reduction in nearly four times of the adult paddle area.

Keywords : Defibrillation; Impedance Compensation; Transthoracic Impedance.