When someone’s heart suddenly stops, every second matters. A new M Health Fairview program is giving rural Minnesotans a better chance at survival by flying in lifesaving equipment and specialists when time is running out.
For years, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, has been available only in major Twin Cities hospitals. It’s a machine that temporarily takes over the work of the heart and lungs, keeping oxygen flowing through the body after a cardiac arrest.
“For the last decade within the Twin Cities metro area, we’ve been providing ECMO and ECPR for patients with cardiac arrest that does not respond to standard treatments,” said Dr. Jason Bartos, a cardiologist with M Health Fairview at the University of Minnesota Medical Center. “This is a pump that provides normal blood flow and takes over the function of the heart and lungs when their heart and lungs do not respond.”
Now, that same advanced care can be delivered by helicopter to hospitals like M Health Fairview Lakes Medical Center in Wyoming, Minnesota.
“Our goal with the helicopter-based program is to bring the expertise and the equipment to these sites further out from the Twin Cities so that we can provide this treatment to a larger population of people, more in the rural areas of Minnesota,” Bartos said.
The treatment, known as ECPR when used during cardiac arrest, can drastically improve survival rates. In past studies across the Twin Cities, patients who received ECPR had survival rates around 43% compared to roughly 1% with standard therapy alone.
“ECPR is extremely time dependent,” Bartos said. “Every minute we have, we lose almost 2.5% more people with every minute that passes by.”
That urgency is what inspired M Health Fairview and Life Link III to create a mobile ECMO team capable of landing at rural emergency departments, starting the procedure, and then airlifting the patient back to the University of Minnesota Medical Center for recovery.
At Fairview Lakes, emergency staff say the new program bridges a life-or-death gap.
“Now that help comes to us, so we’re able to help people on the worst day of their life and bring that equipment to them,” nurse manager Liz Asanovich said.
Dry runs and simulations are already underway to make sure hospital staff and flight crews are in sync when real calls come in.
“They did reassure us that I didn’t need to know how to run their ECMO equipment,” Asanovich said. “I simply need to provide a venue so that they can bring their specialty and do the work.”
M Health Fairview says more rural sites are expected to join the program in the months ahead, extending advanced heart and lung support to patients who might not otherwise survive the trip.
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