GREENVILLE, PA. Center conducts airway study

Ten regional ambulance services have agreed to provide detailed reports about paramedics helping patients breathe.
GREENVILLE, Pa. -- The Center for Rural Emergency Medicine (CREM) is leading a study that may eventually improve emergency services to Mercer County residents.
It's called the Prehospital Airway Collaborative Evaluation, a technical term for helping patients to breathe.
The study will look at how and when paramedics should perform an endotracheal intubation (ETI), the process of inserting a tube into a patient's airway to ease breathing.
It can be one of the most important procedures performed by paramedics before a patient arrives at the hospital, said John Libonati, chairman of CREM's board of directors and director of Prehospital Care Services at UPMC Horizon.
Emergency medical services from across the state are providing information on their use of airway management techniques for the study.
"We can find out what we are doing right, what we are doing wrong and what new tools or training we need to provide our paramedics," Libonati said.
Recent advances in technology and reports of errors by paramedics prompted the study, he said.
Time frame: The study will run through the end of this year and CREM has enlisted the participation of 10 emergency medical services from Mercer, Crawford, Venango and Erie counties that have agreed to fill out detailed data forms provided by researchers on every attempted intubation.
CREM, formed by UPMC Horizon, Meadville Medical Center and Northwest Medical Center in Franklin, was created to bring the highest level of emergency medical training to hospital personnel and emergency medical service providers operating in rural areas.