ECMO treatment turns around critical Covid-19 patient at SUM Hospital

Bhubaneswar: Doctors at the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital, faculty of the SOA Deemed to be University here, have been successful in turning around a Covid-19 patient whose lungs had suffered 90 per cent damage by using the Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, also known as ECMO in medical parlance.

Forty-nine-year-old Sujit Kumar Singh, infected by Coronavirus, was admitted into the SUM Covid Hospital on September 15 where he was treated initially before being shifted to the Critical Care Unit of the IMS and SUM Hospital.

His condition had turned serious as both his lungs had suffered 90 per cent damage, Dr. Shakti Bedanta Mishra, Head of the hospital’s Critical Care Unit, said.

 “He was put on ventilator and subjected to high flow nasal oxygen therapy but the measures did not yield the desired result. Then we decided to try ECMO,” he said adding that it functioned as the lungs of the patient while the medical team could concentrate on repairing the lungs.

ECMO is an extracorporeal technique of providing prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to persons whose heart and lungs were unable to provide an adequate amount of gas exchange or perfusion to sustain life.

The patient began to recover slowly and he was put through physiotherapy as well, Dr. Debasish Sahu, Head of the department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery, said adding the recovery process took about two months securing a rare success for such cases in the state.

A seven-member medical team comprising Dr. Mishra, Dr. Sahu, Dr. Arun Rath and Dr. Abhilash Dash, Associate Professors in the Critical Care Unit, Dr. Sushanta Bhoi, Consultant, Cardiac Anesthesia, Dr. Stithipragyan Dalabehera, Head of the Physiotherapy department and Mr. Sanatan Chand, Perfusionist, treated the patient.