PENN TWP — LifeFlight, an arm of the health services connected with Allegheny General Hospital, operates an air medical unit based at the Butler County Airport.

Also based at the airport is a helicopter maintenance facility that does routine and intensive maintenance of the emergency medical helicopters.

“LifeFlight began in 1978, and was the first helicopter program east of the Mississippi,” said Joe Kiren, a clinical outreach nurse and spokesman for the program. “Allegheny General Hospital wanted to focus on trauma and developed the first trauma center in the state.”

LifeFlight grew out of the need to get trauma victims to the center quicker than by ambulance, he said.

The Butler County base was established in the late 1980s.

The helicopter crew tends to people who were injured in an accident and to patients being moved from another hospital.

However, because hospitals such as Butler Memorial have upgraded their level of care, such as expanding cardiac care units to include open heart surgery, LifeFlight does not transfer as many patients from some hospitals as in the past, Kiren said.

But that means when LifeFlight does transfer patients, they are often sicker than before, according to flight nurse Art Russ.

Still, it’s not unusual for LifeFlight to pick up patients for inter-hospital transfer two or three times a day. Other times it may be a week before the helicopter makes a visit to a facility.Grove City Hospital, for instance, opened a new cardiac catheterization lab last year, but it does not do open heart surgery. So if during a cardiac catheterization procedure, it becomes necessary for an intra-aortic balloon pump to be connected to a patient, LifeFlight helicopters have that device as part of its on-board equipment and flight nurses are trained to care for patients on it during transport.“Our program is designed around having two nurses who can serve as paramedics,” Kiren said.“Every device you would need for the sick or injured in an emergency room, we have on board,” said Kiren.Also on hand are 2 units of O positive blood and 2 units of O negative blood.They also transfer patients from ambulances.“About four or five times a year, we will meet an ambulance already in route, and take it from there,” said pilot Mike Dunn.

Sometimes the ambulance will go to the Butler County Airport for the switch from ground to air transport.“If the weather is bad, they’ll put us in an ambulance,” said Russ, explaining the Butler Ambulance Service equipment will be augmented by LifeFlight’s for the ground trip to a receiving medical facility. “It’s not our favorite mode of transportation, but it gets the job done.”Occasionally, babies are born aboard LifeFlight, but the birth is recorded as having taken place at the receiving medical facility, Kiren said.“Nobody dies in the aircraft,” said Russ. “We do CPR to keep them alive until landing.”Nor does LifeFlight fly with a dead person on board. If the victim is declared dead before the helicopter lifts off, the victim is placed in an ambulance and driven to the nearest medical facility.Having an on-site aviation maintenance facility is a boon to LifeFlight based in Butler, said site manager Dave Taggart. He and six mechanics are employees of Keystone Helicopters, providing aviation services to AGH’s LifeFlight helicopters.“This is a 24/7/365 operation and a mechanic is always on call,” said Taggart.

Usually three mechanics are on duty daily, but when one of the helicopter fleet is in the hangar for extensive maintenance, all six, plus Taggart, can be in the shop poring over “everything that doesn’t have a heartbeat” in the helicopter.Daily maintenance and visual inspections are done in the hangar by both the mechanics and pilots. On a regularly scheduled basis, “all the components that are hard to get to” are examined.Some maintenance is done on a monthly schedule, some in 50-hours-of-flight increments.“It used to be you could fix a helicopter with a tool box,” said Taggart. But now it takes a lap top computer with diagnostic capabilities.Helicopter mechanics based in Butler have attended factory-approved school for the Sikorsky S-76 and MD 900, but can work on other helicopters.Taggart, a Slippery Rock native, graduated from Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics, but most of his maintenance crew learned their craft in the military.Taggart has worked for Keystone Helicopters for 10 years.“I always wanted to work on helicopters,” said Taggart. “But I also always wanted to work on the space shuttle. My best friend got that job.”

- LifeFlight bases:- Allegheny General Hospital- Indiana Regional Medical Center- Butler County Airport, Penn Township- Rostraver Airport- Greensburg-Jeanette Regional Airport, Westmoreland County- Mailing address: LifeFlight, Allegheny General Hospital, 320 East North Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212.- Telephone: 412-359-3555- E-mail: lf@wpahs.org.- The two types of aircraft:- Sikorsky S-76; cost $7 million- MD 900 Explorer.The S-76 is a high-speed, efficient passenger and cargo transport helicopter. It can cruise at high speeds with low fuel consumption and in poor weather conditions that may ground other air medical units. It is larger and heavier than the MD 900 and has retractable wheels for greater speed. It travels about 2½ miles per minute.The MD Explorer has fixed skids and features a no-tail rotor system and allows two-patient transfers.- Territory: LifeFlight helicopters operate within a 130-mile radius of Pittsburgh.- Medical crew: LifeFlight has 47 flight nurses who each work two 24-hour shifts per week. On board medical personnel are employees of AGH and rotate through the five bases and, on occasion, the hospital emergency room.- Flight crew: Pilots and maintenance crew are fixed base employees of Keystone Helicopters, which provides aviation services for the helicopters, which are, for the most part, owned by AGH.