What is code blue in medicine?

If you are a medical student, if you are thinking about it study medicine at EIA or if you've just watched a lot of Hollywood movies that take place in a hospital, chances are you're wondering what a code blue is in medicine.
Here we have the answer to your question, but we will also tell you what the other colors in the medical world codes mean and other things you have yet to find out.

What is a blue code in medicine?

Code blue in medicine is a rapid response protocol that is provided in healthcare institutions to care for people suffering from cardiorespiratory arrest. That is to say, it is a series of logical and pre-established actions that all the people in the facility know in order to be able to take care of patients suffering from unemployment in the fastest way to drastically reduce the possibility of their dying.
All medical students and everyone involved in patient care in hospitals, clinics, health centers or emergency services must know the code blue protocol to start, execute and end it without any delay.

Find out what a crashed car is

The crash cart, or red trolley, is a wheeled device that can be easily transported within medical institutions and contains the most essential things to save patients' lives in an emergency.
In English it is called a "crash car" and has: a defibrillator, a flashlight, many medicines, needles, catheters, probes, syringes, sodium bicarbonate, serums, cannulas, gloves and many other things that all healthcare personnel know how to use and exactly where they are on the crash cart.

What is a Defibrillator?

A defibrillator is an electrical device that sharply and briefly applies a controlled electric current to the human body to stop and reverse rapid heart arrhythmias. In other words, it is an electrical device that sends an electric current to the heart to get it out of the stop.
The most common defibrillators are the external ones, since they are the ones we all see seen in the movies as two plates that are placed on the patient's chest, but there are also internal defibrillators, which are placed inside the patient's chest through a simple surgical procedure.

Difference between heart attack and cardiac arrest

It is sometimes normal for people to confuse the terms heart attack and cardiac arrest, but in reality, these are two different medical situations that need to be treated in different ways:
Cardiac arrest occurs when there is a malfunction of the heart due to an arrhythmia. When this happens, the heart stops pumping blood to the brain, lungs, and other organs in the body. As a result, such a patient loses consciousness almost immediately, has no pulse and is not breathing.
The solution for a cardiac arrest is to start CPR and defibrillate the patient as soon as possible, ideally within the first 3 minutes.

A heart attack, on the other hand, is what people commonly call a heart attack, or a heart attack occurs when a coronary artery becomes blocked. These are responsible for the blood supply to the heart muscle itself, so when one of them is blocked (generally by a thrombus, i.e. a blood clot) the piece of heart muscle that had been irrigated begins to slowly die.
In heart attacks, people do not lose consciousness, still have a pulse and can breathe, but have severe chest pains, have difficulty speaking, and may feel sick, nauseous, or very cold.
Treatments for heart attacks are different for each case, as they are sometimes treated with surgery and surgical procedures and sometimes with medication alone.
Also, heart attacks are not only in the heart, but any artery in the body can be blocked and cause a heart attack. For example, heart attacks in the brain are very serious strokes.
The vast majority of heart attacks do not lead to cardiac arrest, but it is true that many cardiac arrests occur following a heart attack.

Other color codes in medicine

The blue code in medicine is just one of the many codes that the health personnel of the institutions know. Here we tell you what are some other very common ones.

fuchsia code in medicine

The fuchsia code in medicine is the expression that activates the treatment protocol for people who may have been victims of sexual violence.
This code has implications for medical and physical care, but also places a strong focus on emotional care and the legal action that must then be taken to help the victim.

red code in medicine

Code red is the treatment protocol for women suffering from obstetric haemorrhage. In other words, it is the set of actions that must be taken to prevent pregnant and parturient women from bleeding to death.
This code is very important worldwide as obstetric bleeding is the leading cause of maternal death worldwide.

lilac code in medicine

The purple code is a new strategy in the world of medicine that responds to the need to humanize patient processes, since many times there have been cases where they have not been treated with respect and privacy. For this reason, the purple code is the protocol that is activated when a patient is dying and heroic procedures are not about to be carried out, thus providing him and his family with a space of respect, silence and privacy.