MUSCAT: A special medical team from the Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH) has successfully treated a woman in her fifties who suffered from blockage in the coronary arteries by using the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) technique also known as extracorporeal life support.
Dr Saif bin Hamad al Ghafri, ICU and emergency medicine consultant at the SQUH, said that ECMO is a rarely used medical technique. The aim of this technique is to provide cardiac and respiratory support to persons whose heart and lungs are unable to provide an adequate amount of gas exchange or perfusion to sustain life. It depends on pumping and oxygenating a patient’s blood outside the body.
The device implantation is complicated during sudden cardiac arrest without prior preparations which requires fast medical intervention to avoid damage caused by ischemia to various organs of the body and lack of oxygen especially to the brain, Al Ghafri said noting that the device was separated from the patient several days after the heart muscle began to improve significantly and was able to function without external support.
He added that this case is one among the many who have been treated using the same technique. Those cases included a pregnant woman in her thirties who suffered from severe shortage of oxygen due to lung infections as a result of H1N1 complications. The other cases involved lung injuries as a result of accidents, pulmonary hemorrhage, obstruction of the airways, and pulmonary embolism. —ONA
