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Coronavirus: intensive care techniques prove vital to saving lives
- Chinese doctors use extracorporeal membrane oxygenation to rescue critically ill patient from verge of death
- Shortage of key equipment in Italy may have contributed to high mortality rate, experts say
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A 50-year-old man infected with the novel coronavirus was admitted to the intensive care unit at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan last month suffering with respiratory failure. Doctors put him on a ventilator, but his blood oxygen saturation remained dangerously low.
As the man was at a high risk of organ failure, the doctors opted to carry out a procedure known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which provides prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to people whose heart and lungs are unable to provide an adequate amount of gas exchange or perfusion to sustain life.
After eight days, the machine was disconnected and the man was able to breathe on his own. Five days after that he was able to sit up in bed and feed himself. On Friday afternoon he was discharged from hospital.
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The lack of availability of such life-saving techniques and equipment could be one of the reasons the death toll in Italy is so high. The country, which is now the epicentre of the pandemic, has had more than 4,032 fatalities from just over 47,021 confirmed infections – a mortality rate of about 8.5 per cent.
In comparison, China has had 3,248 deaths from close to 81,000 cases (4 per cent), while Germany has had 44 deaths from just under 14,000 cases (0.3 per cent).
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