Cincinnati - On Thursday, March 23, at 2 p.m., a former University Hospital patient will be reunited with the Air Care and Mobile Care staff members who helped save his life. The reunion will take place on the University Hospital helipad. Members of the media are invited to attend for interviews and/or photographs. Please meet in the main lobby of University Hospital at 1:45 p.m. for escort to the helipad.

Robert Miller, 51, from Milford, was suffering from heart failure when University Air Care was called to transfer him from one local hospital to another. While the Air Care staff was transporting him to the operating room, Miller went into cardiac arrest in the elevator. Air Care flight nurse Deb Jump and former Air Care physician Dan Lindberg, M.D., immediately began CPR. They continued CPR and advance cardiac life support while transporting him from the elevator into the operating room. After 12 minutes, Miller's pulse returned, and he immediately underwent open-heart surgery.

University Hospital's Mobile Intensive Care Unit later transported Miller to University Hospital, where he received a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) and a right ventricular assist device (RVAD). These devices are implanted in heart failure patients to help keep the heart functioning until a new heart is available for transplantation. Miller was discharged from University Hospital, and three months later, he received a heart transplant. Today, Miller is back to work part-time and says he is feeling well.

"After this occurred, I was amazed to see Mr. Miller sitting up and talking to me in the cardiac care unit," says Deb Jump. "It's great to see that he had such a positive outcome."

Air Care was established to provide rapid critical care transport to the community and to assist other health care providers, including hospitals and EMS providers. When a patient's condition demands critical care during transport, or when distance, inaccessible locations or road conditions prevent timely care and transport, Air Care is there to help. Since its inception in 1984, Air Care has completed more than 22,000 patient care flights, and now has a remote base at University Pointe in West Chester to better serve the Butler and Warren county communities.

Mobile Care provides basic, advanced and mobile intensive care ground services, particularly for patients being transferred between medical facilities. Established in 1982, Mobile Care has transported more than 150,000 patients. Together, the services make up Alliance Medical Transport Service. Alliance Medical Transport Service is the only medical transport service in the region accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Services and one of the first in the world to do so for all four levels of care.

The University Hospital is part of the Health Alliance, an integrated health care delivery system that also includes The Christ Hospital, The St. Luke Hospitals, The Jewish Hospital, The Fort Hamilton Hospital and the physicians of Alliance Primary Care. To view other Health Alliance news releases, go to www.health-alliance.com/pressroom.

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