Benicia Fire Department has gotten better-than-expected service from three cardiac monitors it bought 15 years ago, the City Council will learn Tuesday. The machines normally last five to 10 years.

But it’s time for those machines to be replaced, Fire Chief Jim Lydon will tell the Council when he asks it to authorize spending $92,755.02 for the purchase.

In his report, Lydon wrote that his department’s equipment fund has $166,600 in the current two-year budget. Because the fund is expected to have $73,150 in cash at the end of the current budget cycle, he wrote, he’s seeking an appropriation of $12,775 from his equipment replacement fund.

“This purchase will give the Benicia Fire Department the necessary tools that will allow our city’s paramedics to provide state-of-the-art medical diagnosis and treatment that meets the expected standards in pre-hospital care,” he wrote.

“These tools are a vital component that will enable our pre-hospital care providers to deliver quality patient care.”

The fire department answers more than 1,400 emergency medical calls each year, Lydon wrote. “Our goal is to give our citizens the best care possible while enabling our paramedics the ability to quickly recognize and treat patients suffering from such conditions as heart attacks and cardiac arrest.”

He explained that the American Heart Association’s 2010 guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and emergency cardiovascular care recommends minimizing interruptions during CPR, and one common reason for those interruptions is to determine if an “organized, shockable rhythm has developed.”

If those interruptions can be avoided, and life-saving procedures can be delivered appropriately, “resuscitation survival rates can approach 50 percent,” Lydon wrote, citing the AHA guidelines.

The equipment he’s seeking are Zoll Medical Corporation’s “See-Thru CPR” X-Series CPR monitors, which display a filtered signal on a screen, which lets an emergency responder analyze a patient’s heart rhythm without interrupting life-saving procedures.

The machines also indicate when those measures can be stopped. “These features are two of the main components in the ‘chain of survival,’” Lydon wrote.

The type of monitors he wants to buy can stream patient care information by letting a paramedic send real-time 12-lead electrocardiograms to physicians, using either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, he wrote. That’s because Solano County’s emergency medical system instituted a county-wide ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) that has STEMI receivers at various sites.

“With this new technology, patients are triaged in a more effective manner to ensure quicker definitive care,” Lydon wrote.

He explained that the new monitors go on the city’s current “first out” vehicles.

Should a unit need servicing, the vendor would supply the city with an identical monitor for temporary use, he wrote. Not only does Zoll supply the department’s current monitors and defibrillators, it has provided “outstanding customer serice and product superiority, he wrote.

In addition, the monitors Lydon seeks each weighs less than 12 pounds, “which is about half the size and weight of its competitor’s full-featured monitor defibrillators.” Since firefighters and paramedics carry the monitors to a patient, he wrote, the lighter-weight model might reduce the risk of injury to the department’s employees.

The Council will meet in a closed session at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to discuss real estate matters. The regular meeting starts at 7 p.m. in the Council Chamber of City Hall, 250 East L St.