Chennai: A 12-year-old H1N1 infected girl who was in a critical condition, got a fresh lease of life after city doctors put her on a modified heart lung machine that ensured supply of oxygen. After 19 days of treatment, the Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) machine has put the girl on the road to recovery. Though ECMO has been used in other instances in India to cure adults with severe lung infection, this is the first time that a child has been cured of H1N1 using ECMO in India.
“By taking over the work of the heart and lungs, the machine gives a child’s heart or lungs a chance to recover. ECMO supports the patient for days to weeks. Soubashre was hooked to the system for 19 days,” said Dr Indira Jayakumar, Paediatric ECMO Coordinator and Senior Consultant Emergency & Intensive Care, Apollo Children’s Hospitals. Soubashre’s father Balakumar said there was little hope in Puducherry where she was initially admitted.
“For one week, the local doctor said it was fever and gave her tablets. After she began fainting, we took her to the Children’s Hospital there, where nobody helped us.” A local MLA there suggested she be taken to Apollo in Chennai. Once at Apollo, she was immediately put on ECMO, said Dr Jayakumar. To initiate ECMO, catheters are placed in large blood vessels to provide access to the patient’s bloodstream and anticoagulant drugs are given to prevent blood clotting.
The ECMO machine continuously removes blood from the patient and performs gas exchange, like artificial lungs, before returning the blood to the patient.“When the patient is on ECMO we aggressively target infections in the lung and get it to improve as soon as possible,” said Dr K. Madhan Kumar, ECMO specialist and Heart & Lung Transplant Surgeon, Apollo Hospitals. Apollo is planning a paediatric programme called CARES for children who need ECMO at subsidised rate as it costs Rs 1 lakh a day, said Dr Paul Ramesh, ECMO director and heart & lung transplant surgeon.
