Barwon Health heartened by work of life-saving machine

TUESDAY of last week was Restart a Heart Day, and Barwon Health has highlighted the work of an artificial heart-lung machine that is saving lives at University Hospital Geelong.

Treatment for the most severe adult cardiac and respiratory failure uses a process known as extracorporeal membranous oxygenation (ECMO), which has led to improvements in survival rates.

Barwon Health’s ECMO team has spent the past year developing, implementing and training for ECMO-CPR – an extension of the ECMO program that began in 2011.

Barwon Health is now the second busiest adult ECMO centre in Victoria (behind only The Alfred Hospital), Intensive Care Unit (ICU) director Associate Professor Neil Orford said.

“We have a governance and training program recognised internationally, and our team has done an incredible job getting Barwon Health stakeholders to extend our traditional ECMO service to include ECMO-CPR.

“We have been quietly doing more of this over the past few months, and through collaboration with Ambulance Victoria, our Emergency Department and cardiac services are now providing this complex, technical intervention within an hour of cardiac arrest for selected patients.”

Marked on October 16, Restart a Heart Day aims to encourage people to learn CPR or update their knowledge to help increase survival rates before emergency services arrive.

Associate Professor Orford said less than 1 in 10 people survived a cardiac arrest.

“Our hope is the use of ECMO-CPR will add to care we know improves the chance of good survival, such as early bystander CPR, expert care by our ambulance services, and advanced inhospital care.”

For more information on CPR, head to restartaheart.net.