For Covid-19 patients with badly damaged lungs, Safdarjung Hospital is the only government-run facility in Delhi that provides ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) as a last resort treatment. The treatment entails assuming control of the lungs and heart, allowing the injured lungs to heal on their own. However, the two patients who were placed on ECMO therapy at the hospital did not survive, and the treatment is costly.
While ECMO treatment has been successful in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome and is considered by some as the only hope for Covid-19 patients who won’t survive even with ventilator support, its success rate has been very low. Recently, a seriously-ill Covid patient was treated successfully using ECMO at the KIMS Health hospital in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram. Another Covid-19 patient, a doctor from a Delhi government hospital, has been on ECMO support for over 40 days at Yashoda hospital in Hyderabadad, awaiting a lung transplant.
The patients offered ECMO tratment at Safdarjung hospital were critical and died of other complications. The first one admitted last year died of a heart attack three days after being put on ECMO and the second patient, a woman under 40 years of age, admitted during the second Covid wave this year, died after 18 to 19 days of treatment due to sepsis or blood infection.
