Lung bypass helps some H1N1 victims

November 24, 2009|Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A technology originally developed for premature babies might be helping to save some of the sickest swine flu patients by rerouting their blood so their lungs can rest.

It’s a risky approach using equipment that only certain specialized hospitals have. But faced with children and young adults struggling to breathe despite ventilators, intensive-care doctors are dusting off these machines, named ECMO for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.

“It was pretty scary knowing that was his blood flowing through those tubes in and out of his body,’’ said Susie Damm of Omaha, whose 19-year-old son, Ryan, survived a life-threatening bout after 10 days on ECMO.

No one knows which patients are most likely to benefit - not everyone does. But ECMO is gaining attention after Australian researchers reported that the machines helped during that country’s outbreak. A voluntary US-based registry counts 107 critically ill swine flu patients recently treated with ECMO, most from this country.

Estimates from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that swine flu has hospitalized 98,000 Americans in the past six months, and killed nearly 4,000.