Pioneer Respiratory Treatment Turns Ten

A revolutionary respiratory treatment recently marked its 10-year anniversary with a reunion of 25 former patients who got a second chance at life. Party participants ranged from one-month to 10-years of age, and as one child put it, "this machine saves lives."

Memorial Hermann Children's Hospital, currently one of only two Houston hospitals to offer Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, introduced this lifesaving technique to Houston in 1992. A last resort for survival of respiratory failure, a heart/lung bypass "breathes" for babies in severe respiratory distress, allowing the heart and lungs to rest and heal until children can breathe comfortably on their own.

The Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation process begins when blood is siphoned out of the body via a large tube inserted into a neck vein. The blood then runs through the tube down to a pump that pumps it through artificial lungs where "bad" gases, such as carbon dioxide, are removed and replaced with "good" ones, such as oxygen. The blood is then heated and pumped back into the body.

Among those on hand to be reunited with the former patients were Amir Kahn, M.D., neonatologist and director of the Memorial Hermann Children's Hospital ECMO program; registered nurse clinician Vicki Remington, coordinator of the hospital's program; and registered nurse clinician Karen Brumley, director of the hospital's neonatal intensive care units.

Memorial Hermann Children's Hospital is a 150-bed hospital that combines the technological advances of a full-service, university-affiliated hospital with compassion and healing expertise. More than 8,000 sick and injured children are treated every year at Memorial Hermann Children's Hospital, from the tiniest of premature infants to adolescents up to the age of 16.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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