Medica Superspecialty Hospital breathes new life to 60 yr. old ECMO COVID positive physician after 60 days in hospital

Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], Aug 10 (ANI/BusinessWire India): Medica Group of Hospitals, the largest private hospital chain in Eastern India, has successfully treated and discharged a 60-year-old, a renowned physician, who was detected with COVID 19 ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome).
The frontline intensive care doctors at Medica, comprising Critical Care & ECMO specialists, gave veno-venous ECMO (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) support and recuperated the patient from the deadly virus after 60 days of treatment.
While the entire humanity is grappling with the cataclysmic effect of the deadly virus, this kind of life-redeemable treatment bears testimony of efficient clinical management and the fact that healthcare professionals are administering to patients with superlative care amidst the ongoing prolonged crisis.
The doctor who was amongst the frontline warriors from Kolkata tested positive for COVID 19 and was admitted in Medica Superspecialty Hospital in the first week of June.
From the initial phase he was suffering from acute respiratory failure. The clinical team headed by Dr Kunal Sarkar decided to shift the patient to the CTVS unit. Despite optimization of ventilation support & proning, the patient's condition deteriorated and his oxygen saturation had gone down to 60% which progressively worsened the situation.
The clinical team had taken a judicious decision to put him on VV- ECMO support for which helped him to recover from the acute state. The patient was released from ECMO after 12 days, post which he was under ventilation for 40 days until he was successfully discharged from Medica Superspecialty Hospital. He has successfully battled Corona after fighting for 60 days in the hospital.
"It is not always possible to clinically manage acute respiratory distress in COVID-19 patients with ventilator support and ECMO is the last option for them. We salute him for his immense mental strength, which saw him through this struggle with an ever-smiling face. It is necessary to facilitate ECMO intervention with the correct infrastructure and expertise. ECMO support in severe COVID pneumonia has proved its definite role in Europe and North America in more than thousand cases where all the ventilatory measures fail. In Eastern India ECMO Team of Medica is providing this support for severe COVID patients," stated Dr Kunal Sarkar Senior Vice Chairman, Medica Superspecialty Hospital.
"The 60-year-old doctor is one of the very few patients in India who could fight back COVID 19 ARDS despite being on ECMO support. Amidst the daily news of many health care workers getting affected and succumbing to COVID 19, when one from our fraternity fights the odds and goes home recovered, it gives immense hope to the entire medical community. It was a challenging case, fraught with complications and risks. It is indeed a great service; I applaud the on-time decisions by Critical Care & ECMO specialists that really paid off well. We all are at the juncture where we are continuously adapting new things to restructure the healthcare domain and imbibing best practices as caregivers," said Dr Alok Roy, Chairman, Medica Group of Hospitals, about offering a new lease of life, to the patient.
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