Coronary heart Assaults in Space – Nautilus

Heart assaults occur in area. And area companies have a panoply of contortionist protocols that astronauts can use when such emergencies happen on the market among the many stars.

NASA, for instance, recommends rescuers within the International Space Station carry out what’s known as the “handstand method.” This is when the particular person doing CPR on an area traveler experiencing cardiac arrest does a handstand on their chest and braces their ft in opposition to some inside a part of the spacecraft to generate sufficiently strong chest compressions. Other strategies embrace the reverse bear hug and the Evetts Russomano, the place rescuers wrap both the arms or legs, respectively, across the stricken particular person’s torso to compress their chest.

But now there could also be a greater method to deal with coronary heart assaults in area below microgravity: It entails a piston.

A crew of scientists and clinicians from numerous French establishments reported on the brand new method in a examine revealed final 12 months within the journal Resuscitation, and can current their findings on the European Society of Cardiology Congress taking place in Spain this weekend. The crew examined three computerized chest compression devices on a CPR dummy throughout a parabolic airplane flight that simulates microgravity situations just like these skilled by area vacationers. They discovered that one specifically, a normal piston system to carry out chest compressions, may ship a pressure adequate to achieve an optimum depth of about 2 inches into an individual’s torso.

The system might be a important instrument to incorporate in first assist kits carried on cosmic journeys. “It will be up to every space agency whether they want to include automatic chest compression devices in their emergency medical kit,” stated Nathan Reynette, a heart specialist on the University of Lorraine, in a statement. “We know they have other considerations beyond effectiveness, such as weight and space constraints.”

Although most astronauts are younger and match, and thus the chance of cardiac arrest in area is comparatively low, such a forethought might change into more and more needed with the rise of area tourism and longer area missions, Reynette says.

Nobody needs their first journey into the cosmos—or their second, or third—to be their final.

Lead picture: intueri / Shutterstock

• Bob Grant

  Posted on August 28, 2025

  Bob Grant is the deputy editor at Nautilus.