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Application of ECMO Successfully Treated Critically Ill COVID-19 Patients
25 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2020
More...Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been pandemic and is leading to many deaths due to refractory respiratory failure. Here, we report our experience of treating 5 critically ill patients with COVID-19 using extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) from February 18 to March 31, 2020, in the intensive care unit. All the patients survived and recovered. Our data demonstrates that ECMO is an effective method to save the patients with critically ill COVID-19. ECMO should be applied precede the onset of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome-induced by respiratory failure and hypoxemia, instead of a salvage therapy. For patients with the support of both invasive ventilation and ECMO, it’s reasonable to remove endotracheal intubation first if their lung lesions were well relieved. Our experiences also indicated that awake ECMO without invasive ventilation might be a feasible strategy for the patients with critically ill COVID-19.
Funding Statement: This work grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81570261).
Declaration of Interests: None declared.
Ethics Approval Statement: This study was approved by the Ethics Commission of Tongji Hospital. Written informed consent was waived due to the rapid emergence of this infectious disease.
Keywords: COVID-19, novel coronavirus, respiratory failure, ECMO, hypoxemia
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