MCVI Jennie ECMO

After several doctors’ visits and trips to the emergency room at Memorial Hospital West, Jennie was initially diagnosed with vasculitis and what the doctors thought was pneumonia because she had been coughing up blood clots. This scare led to her being admitted to the Intensive Care Unit because she had gone into respiratory distress, which required the use of a bronchoscope to remove the blood out of her lungs.

While undergoing a chest X-ray a few days later, Jennie bled into her ventilation tubes. She was diagnosed with Wegener’s/GPA vasculitis with an active leukocytoclastic rash, leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome and diffuse alveolar hemorrhage. To her family’s dismay, her chances of survival were not good.

A cardiac surgeon from Memorial Cardiac and Vascular Institute’s Adult ECMO Program, recommended that she be transported to Memorial Regional Hospital and placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygen (ECMO) machine. Normally reserved for patients with a predicted mortality of greater than 80 percent, ECMO is an innovative life-support intervention that acts as an artificial lung (or heart) for people with acute respiratory failure.

“ECMO temporarily takes over the function of the lungs until they regenerate, allowing the patient to breathe on their own once they recover. It increases the likelihood of surviving to 50-60 percent and can mean the difference between life and death,” said the surgeon.

As an integrated healthcare system, Memorial Healthcare System is uniquely positioned to allow our dedicated team of healthcare providers to not only work within each of our six hospitals, but across our facilities as well. After performing the necessary treatment to stabilize Jennie, under the care and supervision of our Critical Care Transport team, specially trained in ECMO transport, she was brought her to Memorial Regional Hospital, where she awoke nine days later.

Thanks to the Memorial team, Jennie got the right therapy, at the right place, at the right time and was able to recover and continue living a normal life.

“I have never come across someone who cares about patients the way Memorial cared for me,” Jennie said. “My new medical family is made up of people I will never forget. I have air in my lungs, a strong beat in my heart, and, in the words of my daughters, ‘sunshine in my pocket.’”