The professionals of the Intensive Medicine Unit (UMI) of the Maternal and Child University Hospital of the Canary Islands have carried out the first transfer between islands of a minor in critical condition who required extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).after having suffered an accident.
This technique uses an extracorporeal pump to support the patient’s lung function. The Pediatric ICU of the hospital complex has, since 2017, a highly specialized multi-professional team for ECM careOr, with which cardiac and/or pulmonary support is given to patients in critical situations in which conventional support measures, such as mechanical ventilation, have failed.
The professionals from the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria University Hospital requested the intervention of the ECMO team of the Maternal and Child University Hospital of the Canary Islands, after carrying out two urgent interventions of hepatic embolization and segmental hepatectomy on this two-year-old patient, whom they managed to stabilize. Although, given the seriousness of his condition and the situation of respiratory failure due to severe pulmonary contusion, after trying to manage the contusion through mechanical ventilation techniques without success, the professionals of the Pediatric ICU considered that he needed the ECMO technique, as supportive therapy.
It was an urgent assistance in which the functions of the lungs had to be replaced until the damage or failure of the lungs recovered.. Currently, the girl, after more than a week of hospitalization in the Maternity Pediatric ICU, continues to recover from the injuries suffered.
This is the first time that cannulation and transfer of a pediatric patient with ECMO has been performed from an issuing hospital within the autonomous community itself. These types of transfers are carried out in very few units throughout the national territory given the complexity involved.
The patient’s situation required the activation of a specialized device that traveled to the issuing hospital, implanted the therapy and carried out its subsequent transfer to the Maternal and Child ICU. This has meant an important performance in the area, acting for the first time as a reference unit in this type of transfers.
More than fifty professionals from different departments of both hospitals participated in this activation, including Emergency, Pediatrics, Liver Surgery and Interventional Radiology personnel from Hospital Nuestra Señora de Candelaria as well as Cardiovascular Surgery, Perfusionists, Intensive Medicine from the Insular-Maternal and workers from the Canary Islands Emergency Service and 112 from both provinces.
