I got mixed feelings. Technically they did everything well (and by the way, external paddles can go down to 5 joules on a manual defibrillator, and intracardiac defib starts at 25 joules). From a systems standpoint that a lot of resources going into someone who was going to die. But people will say, "but Devil Doc, how do you know he was going to die?" Because traumatic arrests from penetrating trauma has less than a 3% of survival, if the arrest occurs within 10 minutes of an OR; and the fact they had to do CPR that long. Between not oxygenating his noodle, his kidneys, his lungs, the hypothermia, oh, he was destined to die.
That said: big, clanging brass balls for a non-MD to do an open thoracotomy. Gold claps.
Absolutely agreed