Doctor on skis helps save life
The young skier had hit a tree at Steamboat Springs and was thrashing in the snow with a head injury on Sunday when ski patrollers arrived.
They immediately radioed for a doctor.
Dr. Ernest E. Moore, chief of trauma at Denver Health Medical Center, was skiing a few hundred yards away when the radio he carries each time he skis at Steamboat cackled.
“They told me a patient was down with a severe head injury and there was a possibility of cardiac arrest,” said Moore, who skied to the bottom quickly, then caught a snowmobile ride up the crash site.
If not for those radios, Andrew Parker, 21, a Princeton University student, would have died, said Moore, who doesn’t so much credit himself as he does Steamboat’s unusual medical-ski patrol program.
Moore is one of seven physician/skiers and another five paramedics who are given free lift tickets in exchange for being on-call on the slopes.
He skis at Steamboat 40 or 50 times a year, each time with the radio that connects him to the ski patrol.
As Moore got the call, ski patrol members already were grabbing the backpacks filled with medical supplies they keep at their stations.
“By the time I got there, a huge number of ski patrol people and two paramedics were already there,” said Moore, who arrived within a couple minutes of the call. “They were immobilizing him and resuscitating him.”
Parker, who is from Monmouth Junction, N.J., had stopped moving and was unresponsive when Moore arrived.
“His pulse showed signs of neurological injury,” Moore said. His eyes were large, fixed and dilated and didn’t respond to light. “He was in the throes of an impending cardiac arrest from the neurological injury.”
Moore helped the paramedics get a tube in his trachea. They gave him a drug that temporarily paralyzed him, in part so his movements wouldn’t disturb the delicate breathing tube. The treatments lowered the levels of carbon dioxide in his blood and helped shrink his swelled brain.
“He went from impending death to being responsive,” Moore said. The paramedics and the ski patrol brought him to the Yampa Valley Medical Center a quarter mile from the slopes.
Parker was flown to Denver and brought to Denver Health Medical Center where he remains in critical condition in intensive care, but is responding to verbal cues from the nurses.
“He has a good chance for recovery,” Moore said.
Parker’s parents flew to Denver immediately.
“It’s frightening to take a trip like that and not know whether your son will be alive when you get there,” said Andrew’s father, Steve Parker, who has been by his son’s side every day.
“My son’s recovery is doing as well as it is because they were there,” Steve Parker said. “Their actions may have saved his life.”
It was Andrew’s first trip to Colorado and his first time on skis. He was skiing with an instructor and apparently not wearing a helmet.
Andrew’s father wonders why helmets weren’t required and whether the intermediate slope was appropriate for a first-timer, “but those questions now are in the back of my mind.”
“My understanding is they were going down a hill and Andrew was a little ahead. He tried to do what the instructor told them to do, but didn’t execute it very well.”
The doctors are optimistic because Andrew is off the ventilator and suffered no other injuries except the blow to the head, Steve Parker said. “It’s still going to be a long recovery.”
Steamboat’s program of putting doctors and paramedics on the mountain is a couple of decades old.
John Kohnke, director of the ski patrol at Steamboat, said the system works because Steamboat Springs is a small town where everyone knows everybody, “and everybody skis.”
Paramedics, emergency, medical technicians and doctors all get training and use the same communication system.
“We give the doctors passes, they’ll come in, grab a radio and let mountain dispatch know they’re on the hill,” Kohnke said. “Almost miraculously, when we’ve needed them, they’ve been there.”
Dr. David Cionni, who heads the Advanced Life Support program at Steamboat, says at least one physician or paramedic is on the hill “almost 100 percent of the time.”
Cionni said the system works well because skilled medical people can do the paralyzing, sedating, intubating and defibrillating right on the slopes, when minutes count.
“The backbone is the ski patrollers who know when to call for help and what to do until it gets there,” Cionni said.
Moore can afford to buy lift tickets, but says he carries a radio because he admires the professionalism of the team and “because it’s a service I should provide. It’s nice for physicians to volunteer for the public good. That’s what we should be all about.”
Vail ski resort doesn’t have doctors on skis, but a local physician who is the long-time adviser to the ski patrol trains the staff, said spokeswoman Jen Brown.
At Breckenridge Ski Area, a fully staffed medical center sits at the base of Peak Nine, said spokeswoman Dawn Doty.
“We have three full-time doctors and four or five full-time nurses” who get free ski passes, Doty said.
Steve Parker is just thankful there were doctors and paramedics around when his son hit the tree.
“I understand Steamboat is one of the few in the country that has a program like that,” he said. “I think it’s a great idea, and I don’t know why it’s not done elsewhere.”
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