A Penn Medicine team is testing whether a new technology that gives live ultrasound images from inside a patient during CPR can help doctors get those answers faster. The device, called Rescue TEE, uses a tiny camera at the end of a thin, flexible tube inserted through a patient’s throat to take ultrasound pictures of the heart during resuscitation.

“Instead of working in the dark,” said Asad Usman, assistant professor in the department of anesthesiology and critical care at Penn Medicine, who used Rescue TEE to help determine why Scalies went into cardiac arrest.

The Rescue Transesophageal Echocardiography for In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (ReTEECA) trial, led by Jacob Gutsche, associate chief medical officer of critical care, will compare the outcomes of patients treated with Rescue TEE during cardiac arrest to those who receive the standard CPR treatment.

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