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By: Admin
Does Early Intervention for Breast Cancer Save Lives
PUNE: "When ventilators fail, the ECMO saves. And I'm living
proof of that," said 50-year-old Hadapsar resident Ashok
Mane.
Last year, Ashok fell critically ill after swine flu-induced
pneumonia led to a condition called acute respiratory
distress syndrome (ARDS)
He was put on a ventilator, but his doctors, desperate to save
him, knew he needed a device a step above the ventilator,
called the ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation),
which oxygenates blood outside the body. Unfortunately,
there was no machine on site.
It was at this juncture Ashok's doctors called Pune's first
mobile ‘ECMO Retrieval Team’ - a specialised inter-hospital
transport service for patients on the brink.
A team of experts then turned up in an ambulance
equipped with the ECMO machine and moved Ashok from
Noble hospital to Deenanath Mangeshkar (DMH) on August
15 last year. After 25 days on the ECMO and a long rehab, he
was discharged on October 11
“It has been just a month now. I'm back at work. ECMO
retrieval gave me a new lease of life," Ashok said on Sunday.
ECMO is the last resort for patients who have failed other,
more conventional forms of therapy such as mechanical
ventilation. Some private hospitals in India have on-site
ECMO treatment, but only five centres provide these highly
delicate ECMO-equipped patient transfer services, also
called ‘mobile ECMO retrieval’
"We transferred five patients using our mobile ECMO service
within a year of its launch. These were patients who were not
improving despite mechanical ventilation. Two of the five
patients survived, when their chances of survival were
extremely bleak," said Dr Nilesh Mahale, the DMH's critical
care expert.
Essentially, the service provides support to patients with
severe respiratory and cardiovascular issues, who may be too
unstable for regular inter-hospital transfers.
"Globally, outcomes for such patients who need ECMO are
better at designated high-end centres. In India, there are
limited centres that can manage a patient on ECMO
because it requires a well-trained team. So it's important
that such patients are taken only to specialised centres," Dr
Mahale said,
The DMH's chief intensivist Dr Prasad Rajhans said over the
last one year, the hospital has been regularly retrieving
patients from hospitals in western India. "The team is
available to go and rapidly stabilise and retrieve patients
referred to the service," he said
