The art of medicine
-
- March
- 25
Did you see the article that recounts White Plains Hospital ER doc Erik Larsen’s decision to use an new treatment technique on a 49-year-old woman who went into sudden cardiac arrest?
Larsen, who lives with his spouse, Rockland County Legislator Connie Coker in South Nyack, (D-17th District) made the kind of decisions we think only TV ER docs make: A snap decision to try something untried to save a patient who looked all but lost. His decision: To employ cooling blankets recently purchased by the hospital but not tried, with no protocol established, and induce therapeutic hypothermia, to stave off brain damage that so often accompanies this kind of without-warning massive heart attack.
Photo: Erik Larsen, M.D. FACEP, the Associate Director of the Emergency Department at the White Plains Hospital Center, checks a reading from a monitor March 13, 2007. ( Mark Vergari / InTown Westchester )
Larsen is associate director of White Plains Hospital’s emergency department, and an expert in medevac rescues who has worked with FEMA, and was part of a federal disaster medical assistance team that headed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He acted as medical director for the hospital set up in the New Orleans International Airport.
Telling this story—and a great thanks to Siegrid Buhleller, the patient, for sharing her most harrowing and personal moments—gives us insight into the art of medicine.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 2:11 pm by Nancy Cutler.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Print
| 
Email
