The 40-year-old patient after more than two months on the heart-lung machine.
Munich Clinic
How the Munich Clinic reports, last week she discharged a corona patient – after 129 days in the intensive care unit. The “Focus” had reported.
The chances of recovery were initially poor. The 40-year-old’s lung tissue was severely damaged.
For a full 71 days, the patient hung on the ECMO, a machine that oxygenates the blood outside the body.
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The staff of intensive care units has certainly seen the corona pandemic from its worst side. In the third wave in particular, younger patients with severe Covid-19 courses increasingly ended up with them. But apparently even in a state of emergency: miracles happen again and again. Because as the “Focus” reports, last week a patient was discharged from the Munich Clinic in Bogenhausen who had spent 129 days – more than four months – in the intensive care unit there.
The doctors did not want to give up on the 40-year-old patient, named Robert in the article, even though the prospects for recovery were poor. Because his lungs were “catastrophically destroyed” and showed no improvement even after 30 days at the so-called ECMO. ECMO see for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. The procedure is used when artificial ventilation is no longer sufficient, for example because the lung tissue is too badly damaged. The blood is then enriched with oxygen outside the body and then returned to it.
Although Robert’s prospects for recovery seemed poor, a senior physician at the hospital, Dr. Markus Engel, “don’t say that we give him up,” they say in a press release. So they left him on the heart-lung machine for a total of 71 days – and it actually turned out that the tissue damage was reversible. The patient was able to take his first steps at the ECMO.
“Light at the end of the tunnel”
After a total of 129 days of treatment in the intensive care unit, it was then first outside. There the patient was allowed to celebrate his recovery with an ice cream. “It’s worth fighting,” sums up Stefan Volz, also a doctor at the clinic.
Robert’s story is not an isolated case, the press release continues: the doctors even left a 42-year-old patient at the ECMO for 92 days. He, too, has now fully recovered.
The need for these devices had increased during the pandemic. So far, more than 20 patients have been treated at the five ECMOs of the Munich Clinic. The state government has now made another machine available.
As far as the overall situation is concerned, improvement is now in sight. So explained Dr. Axel Fischer, CEO of the Munich Clinic: “We are now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with falling incidences and increasing vaccination rates.”
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