Cardiac Safety Using a Swine Surrogate Model for a New Concept Conducted Electrical Weapon—The TASER® T10

Abstract Axon Enterprise, Inc. has developed a new concept Conducted Electrical Weapon (CEW). Instead of the traditional electrically paired two- or four-probe design, the new CEW uses variable probe polarity with ten independently targeted probes. With this design, electrical connections can occur between any connected probes. With ten probes independently targeted, the manufacturer is expecting field efficacy to be higher than the traditional CEW designs. With the capability of up to ten probes on target (the current firmware limits the total connections between probes to 4), the possibility of anterior–posterior transthoracic connections, probes potentially rapidly alternating polarity (which has never been studied), and a new waveform that varies with the load, this new CEW presents new areas for cardiac safety study. The authors used their previously published swine cardiac safety surrogate testing model using hypotensive cardiac capture and ventricular fibrillation as the clinical endpoints to compare the new CEW to two prior generation CEW models, the TASER 7™ and the TASER X26E™, specifically examining multiple probes, anterior–posterior connections, and rapid alternating probe polarities. The drop in mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) during exposures or ventricular fibrillation was the primary end point of interest. The exposure groups were two probes, two probes anterior–posterior, three probes, and four probes. There were a total of 265 thoracic (≥ one probe on the chest) exposures over five swine. A Kruskal–Wallis test assessing for differences in MAP change by weapon did not show any difference ( p = 0.35). There were no instances of ventricular fibrillation. Based on this study, there was not a statistical difference between the CEWs in the clinical endpoints of interest. There was an increase in MAP drop with anterior–posterior connections compared to matched anterior-only connections with the TASER 10. This connection was not studied with the other weapons.