Fifty-six swimmers and their 60 escort paddlers crossed upper Penobscot Bay from Lincolnville to Islesboro, along with volunteers serving on planning, organizing and assisting groups and several corporate donors raised more than $110,000, four times what was raised last year in the inaugural event, LifeFlight of Maine reported.
“It really was a perfect illustration of the teamwork necessary to provide a rural state like Maine with the very best emergency medical care,” said Tom Judge, executive director, adding that the results were what the event’s founder, Jessie Davis, envisioned.
As a nonprofit charity, such fundraising helps bring ultrasound technology to LifeFlight’s critical care teams, Judge said, “Helping us save lives across Maine.”
Advances in this technology over the last decade have allowed ultrasound units to become smaller and more mobile, which is good news for critically injured patients. With this new equipment, the LifeFlight crew can more accurately assess and diagnose patients with internal bleeding or damaged lungs. Internal injuries from trauma are often hidden and nearly always time sensitive. The longer a collapsed lung or cardiac tamponade goes untreated, the more severely it will affect the body’s other systems. Ultrasound helps our flight crew find the injuries and treat them before it’s too late to reverse the damage.