Carbon Monoxide Symptoms Caught on Tape

Posted by Patrick Lickiss on Jul 4, 2012 in Assessment, General, Treatment | 2 comments

There’s an interesting video that has been making the rounds on the Internet that provides a first hand account of what it’s like to suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning. The backstory is that the driver (patient) is a recreational racer who is driving a mid-engine vehicle. His car has a carbon monoxide leak which is filling up the passenger compartment with the products of combustion (CO and soot among others). He has conveniently been videotaping his race. Over time, you can start to see his level of confusion increase and his coordination become delayed. He starts to exhibit rambling speech. Additionally, you can see the buildup of soot on the glass of his roof. Important to note is that for a large portion of time after he claims not to remember, he still appears conscious. Check out the video for yourself:

If you read through the comments on YouTube (something I try not to do often) you’ll see that there is a lot of criticism reserved for the response crew. While that may be a valid conversation to have I think it’s more important to focus on the driver’s presentation. Most recreational racing leagues use volunteers (some with little or no training) to work as safety staff. Many of these leagues also discourage doing damage to drivers’ vehicles (like breaking out a window). Cut them a little slack.

Have you ever run a CO poisoning call? How did the patient present? What was their outcome?

http://twitter.com/unwiredmedic Christopher Matthews

I think given the presentation, I would have tried to have the patient out of the vehicle in 30-60 seconds, just because he was not interacting with any of the responders (that appeared to have taken several minutes to try to elicit a simple response to acknowledge their presence). Clearly an indication of AMS. They needed to get him out of the car and try to figure out why he was altered. This is nowadays made easier, technologically, by the Masimo Rad 57, but crews still have to have these devices. The cherry red skin is too late an indicator to be useful. Also, his respirations were bizarre at the end before they finally took him out of the car. The best tool the crew should have is their index of suspicion. Windows are replaceable, people aren’t. I bet the crews got an inservicing on CO exposure.

I had an ambulance smoke badly while we were one scene, had it checked and of course it didn’t duplicate for the mechanic on duty (we must have been lying about the cloud that was so big the fire department on scene with us approached our rig with extinguishers), so it was sent back out, immediately on another call on the freeway, where it did it again on the next call, which we had to transport to the ER. I wound up being admitted for CO poisoning. I felt dizzy, nauseous, foggy, headache, I vomited, and my exposure was so minimal, that within 4 hours of high-flow O2 and IV, there were no remaining S/S or positive labs. I don’t have any residual detriment, but my wife often tells me I’m not right in the head
- http://510medic.com 510medic
  
  I’m not sure how it is outside of the US but many club racing leagues only use volunteers on their “rescue” teams. I suppose it could go either way when it comes to specific training. I do know that volunteers are strongly discouraged from harming cars during towing operations and the like and I wonder if that may have had something to do with the delay.
  
  Thanks so much for sharing your experience with the CO poisoning. That’s scary but a great educational opportunity for us. Glad you’re (mostly) okay!

Carbon Monoxide Symptoms Caught on Tape

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