G'day and welcome back to the Sydney HEMS Debrief podcast - this is our focused mini-series on Cardiac Arrest. 

Today's episode is a big one. We have the absolute privilege of speaking to the Dr Alice Hutin and Prof Lionel Lamhaut from the pre-hospital ECMO team in Paris, France. 

The team, part of the Service d’Aide Medical d’Urgence (aka SAMU) in Paris, have been performing pre-hospital ECMO for OOHCA since 2011. For the past 10 years, the team have been available 24/7, working in concert with the pre-hospital ICU team dispatched to cardiac arrests in the greater Paris region. 

Truly ground-breaking, Alice and Lionel join us to reflect on over a decade of pre-hospital ECPR care, system implementation and challenges. Too, and perhaps most significantly, Alice and Lionel reflect on the extent to which the pre-hospital ECPR service has influenced every step of the chain of survival in the Paris system - promoting high quality basic and advanced life support at multiple levels within the pre-hospital response. 

Too, Sam does not shy away from asking some tough questions around just who should be performing ECPR - high specialised, limited access services or should this therapy be adopted and delivered more widely. 

This is part one of a two part episode, and is an absolute cracker. 

Be sure to tune in to part two very soon!

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