Academic Emergency Medicine has published a study sponsored by Taser International showing the effect of a Taser on a sheep on Meth. If that doesn’t make you want to read an abstract, nothing will.
Taser, noting a high incidence of methamphetamine intoxication in those being subjected to their product, assessed the cardiac risk of their device on an anesthetized sheep model.
From the abstract:
Results: Animals given methamphetamine demonstrated signs of methamphetamine toxicity with tachycardia, hypertension, and atrial and ventricular ectopy in the 30-minute period immediately after administration of the drug. Smaller animals (n = 8, ≤ 32 kg, mean = 29.4 kg) had supraventricular dysrhythmias immediately after the ECD exposures. Larger animals (n = 8, > 68 kg, mean = 72.4) had only sinus tachycardia after the exposures. One of the smaller animals had frequent episodes of ventricular ectopy after two exposures, including runs of delayed onset, nonsustained six- to eight-beat unifocal and multifocal ventricular tachycardia that spontaneously resolved. This animal had significant ectopy prior to the exposures as well. Thoracotomy performed on three smaller animals demonstrated cardiac capture during ECD exposure consistent with previous animal studies. In the larger animals, none of the methamphetamine-intoxicated animals demonstrated cardiac capture. Two control sheep showed evidence of capture similar to the smaller animals. No ventricular fibrillation occurred after the exposure in any animal.
Conclusions: In smaller animals (32 kg or less), ECD exposure exacerbated atrial and ventricular irritability induced by methamphetamine intoxication, but this effect was not seen in larger, adult-sized animals. There were no episodes of ventricular fibrillation after exposure associated with ECD exposure in methamphetamine-intoxicated sheep.
Full abstract in AEM: Effect of an Electronic Control Device Exposure on a Methamphetamine-intoxicated Animal Model
(Hat tip to PopSci, with picture of what an awake sheep might look like when tazed)
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