Outsource your heartbeat with ECMO

CHENNAI : How can you stay alive without letting your heart beat? Simple. Outsource it. At least that’s what they could do at Fortis Malar Hospital when you have a serious heart condition. Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) technology, which oxgenates your major organs and keeps your heart beating, was used to save the life of a 56-year-old man who had suffered a massive heart attack. Though gaining ground in the West, this technology is relatively new to India. The team of Fortis Malar doctors led by Dr R Ravi Kumar, Senior Consultant-Interventional Cardiology, used this while they repaired his damaged heart.The doctors encountered the 56-year-old man in a state of circulatory collapse after the massive heart attack. Soon after admission he had a cardiac arrest for which he needed CPR and an external cardiac massage. Because of the possibility of near certain death in this scenario without more aggressive treatment, the team decided to support his circulation using a small portable sophisticated artificial heart pump, the ECMO.This pump was made available in an assembled condition at Fortis Malar Hospital by the cardiac surgical team. In an attempt to improve heart circulation, the patient subsequently underwent an angioplasty in the cath lab, and responded well to the treatment.Commenting on the procedure, chief cardiac surgeon Dr K R Balakrishnan said, “ECMO technology has great potential to save lives in and out of hospital, especially in cardiac arrest situations following heart attacks. I foresee great potential for this technology in the near future in countries like India with extremely high incidence of untreated coronary disease.”This artificial heart pump (ECMO) can be used to maintain the patient’s circulation for as long as a month. This gives the much needed time for vital organs like brain, kidney, liver and heart to recover and function normally. ECMO can also be used for patients with badly damaged lungs as in H1N1 influenza and infants with meconium aspiration. This highly effective technology has been proved to be of great benefit in western countries like France and the USA. This equipment can take over the function of heart and lungs. Hence it is useful when the heart fails, as in a heart attack, or when the lungs fail, as in the case of H1N1 infection.