Here are the reasons why I feel that the Thumper is an essential piece of equipment that should be in every ER:

1) Not only does it free-up a person from doing chest compressions, it does the chest compressions more effectively and more consistently than a human can. The Thumper does not get tired out!

2) When the ventilator is used in conjunction with the chest-compressing piston, another set of hands is freed up from bagging the patient. Who can't use another pair of hands during cardiac arrest?  The team in the ER is freed up from the business of performing CPR and can concentrate on the care of the patient.

The Thumper is also effective in the pre-hospital setting.  Detroit EMS carries the Thumper on their rigs.

In addition to the clinical use of the Thumper, I have also used it in a laboratory setting to study the hemodynamics of CPR.  We used the Thumper in all of these studies because of the consistent, effective CPR it performs. We often had the opportunity to compare the waveforms generated by humans performing CPR with those waveforms generated by the Thumper. Consequently, the Thumper was always superior to humans in performing CPR."

Gerard Martin, M.D.
Senior Staff Physician
Dept. of Emergency Medicine
Henry Ford Hospital , Detroit , Michigan