ECMO treatment in Rohtak, Karnal hospitals by next week

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 13

With nearly 2,000 people losing their lives to Covid in the past 12 days, the state has decided to introduce the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) technique to treat critical patients in two government hospitals.

Available in two or three big private hospitals in the NCR, the state is now planning to start the technology at the PGIMS, Rohtak, and Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College (KCGMC), Karnal, from next week.

“Two ECMO machines are lying unused in the PGIMS for the past few months, the CM has ordered the purchase of another one for the KCGMC with immediate effect from the CSR funds,” said Vinod Mehta, Principal Media Adviser to the CM.

The ECMO technology, also known as extracorporeal life support (ECLS), is largely derived from cardiopulmonary bypass, which provides shorter-term support with arrested native circulation. Generally, the technique is used either post-cardiopulmonary bypass or in late-stage treatment of a person with profound heart and/or lung failure, although it is now seeing use as a treatment for cardiac arrest in certain centres, allowing treatment of the underlying cause of arrest while circulation and oxygenation are supported.

During the pandemic, ECMO is being used to support patients with the acute viral pneumonia associated with Covid cases, where artificial ventilation is not sufficient to sustain blood oxygenation levels.

Sources said since the technology is available in a very few private hospitals in the state, there is a lot of pressure on them and people had been approaching politicians to get critical patients treated through these machines.

“The CM has directed the officers that the machines must be made functional by next week,” Mehta said.

Meanwhile, Dr Dhruv Chaudhary, head, pulmonary department, PGIMS, said though two ECMO machines had arrived in the institute a few months ago, they could not be put to use because of the want of consumables. He said the machines were operated by cardiothoracic surgeons and were used only in very critical cases, where lungs were badly damaged.

HOW IT WORKS

• Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a technique of providing prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to persons whose heart and lungs are unable to provide adequate amount of gas exchange or perfusion to sustain life
• It works by temporarily drawing blood from the body to allow artificial oxygenation of red blood cells & removal of carbon dioxide