Hennepin Healthcare received a platinum award for its ECMO program. | Stock Photo
Hennepin Healthcare received a platinum award for its ECMO program. | Stock Photo
Hennepin Healthcare’s Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) Program received a Platinum Level award for Excellence in Life Support by the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO), which recognizes that the ECMO program has remarkable personnel, procedures and systems to support ECMO patients.
“ECMO is used to support the heart and or the lungs of patients until their underlying problem has resolved,” Hennepin Healthcare’s ECMO Medical Director Dr. Matthew Prekker told Hennepin Healthcare News. “In the past months it’s been an essential intervention for critically ill COVID-19 patients who meet therapy criteria. To receive this prestigious recognition in the midst of an incredibly busy season really means a lot to our team and the entire hospital, and is a testimony to everyone’s outstanding work.”
The ECMO treatment can help support the heart and lung outside of the body by sending oxygen to the blood and removing carbon dioxide. This treatment can be critical to ill patients that aren't responding to other forms of treatment.
“For example, when COVID-19 patients become so ill with pneumonia that we can’t safely support them with a ventilator any longer, we consider all our options to save their life, which includes ECMO support for select patients. Patients with COVID-19 may need to be supported with ECMO for weeks at a time, but there have been a number of cases this year where our patient would have almost certainly died without ECMO,” Prekker told Hennepin Healthcare News.
Hennepin Healthcare was also recognized by ELSO for the training, education, communication and collaboration that came with the ECMO program.
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