Lung treatment could ease swine flu http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hGDzXPi841FuE39_lbyvBsemxVDw
Patients with swine flu who experience severe respiratory failure should be given a specialist lung treatment, researchers have said. The treatment - which helped pregnant woman Sharon Pentleton - saves one extra life for every six patients compared with conventional treatment for those who are critically ill. The Glenfield Hospital in Leicester has the only adult unit in the UK which offers the treatment, called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). It involves circulating the patient's blood outside the body and adding oxygen to it artificially. The Glenfield Hospital has five ECMO beds and treats around 100 patients a year on average. The unit can be expanded to 10 beds if necessary. Ms Pentleton had to be flown to University Hospital in Stockholm for the treatment in July because the Leicester unit was full. She was successfully treated and has returned to her Scottish home. The research, published in The Lancet medical journal, said patients with severe but potentially reversible respiratory failure should be treated with ECMO to "significantly improve survival without severe disability". Last week, the Government's chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson said opinion on the treatment's value for adult patients was "divided". He said 13 nurses were required to run one ECMO bed, compared with six or seven for a normal intensive care bed. Now, University Hospitals Leicester NHS Trust said it expected ECMO to be an "essential weapon" in the resurgence of swine flu this winter. Machine for Breathing Troubles May Aid in Swine Flu Care, Researchers Say <'"http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&opzn&page=www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/health/research&pos=Frame4A&sn2=41866d15/6de66a27&sn1=a62f4d1e/1ca193f5&camp=foxsearch2009_emailtools_1011077c_nyt5&ad=WhipIt_b_120x60&goto=http://www.foxsearchl> By <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/donald_g_jr_mcneil/index.html?inline=nyt-per>DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/health/research/16flu.html?_r=1 In a study with implications for <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/influenza/swine_influenza/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>swine flu treatment, British researchers have found that some patients with severe breathing problems do better if their blood is run through a heart-lung machine than if they are attached to a conventional ventilator. If swine flu hospitalizations increase rapidly as the winter gets colder, pressure could rise to put the sickest patients on such machines, which oxygenate the blood without forcing air into the lungs, giving lung tissue the chance to rest and heal. Only 80 to 100 <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/hospitals/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>hospitals in the United States have them - though that is far more than in Britain, where resources were heavily taxed even in its relatively small <http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/the-flu/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>flu outbreak last spring. "We have already used ECMO during the first wave of the pandemic with good effect, and we are expecting ECMO to prove an invaluable weapon in the fight against the winter resurgence of the infection," said one of the study's authors, Dr. Giles Peek, at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, England, using the shorthand for the official name for the therapy, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. The study was published online Tuesday in <http://www.thelancet.com/>The Lancet. The technology, a smaller version of the heart-lung machine used in open-heart surgery, has been around since the 1980s and has saved the lives of thousands of premature infants with underdeveloped lungs, said Dr. Joseph B. Zwischenberger, an ECMO expert and a chest surgeon at the medical school at the <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_kentucky/index.html?inline=nyt-org>University of Kentucky, who wrote a commentary on the study for The Lancet. Dr. Zwischenberger said the effects of the technology were "dramatic" in newborns and satisfactory in children, adding, "How it does in adults depends on how carefully they're selected." He said young flu patients with previously healthy lungs would be ideal candidates. The British study, which took eight years and screened 766 patient to find two groups of 90 to undergo competing treatments, found that ECMO gave adults a 16 percent better chance of survival. The study, paid for by Britain's national health service, originally had nothing to do with swine flu and was created to help national health officials judge whether the benefits of the expensive technology outweighed its risks enough to justify the cost. "If you're a glass-half-full kind of guy, you'd say 16 percent is great," Dr. Zwischenberger said. "If you're a glass-half-empty kind of guy, you'd say, 'Why should I take the risk of moving my patient to another hospital when I could tweak my ventilator care to maybe get that 16 percent?' " The machine itself, which runs the blood through microfibers that let oxygen in and carbon dioxide out, is not much more expensive than a good ventilator; it can cost up to $50,000, while sophisticated ventilators can run about $35,000. But because the blood must be thinned, creating a constant danger of hemorrhaging or clots, it requires far closer monitoring: one therapist per one or two patients 24 hours a day, while a respiratory technician can monitor up to 10 patients on ventilators and a nurse can watch up to 4, Dr. Zwischenberger estimated. Vaccine Is Approved WASHINGTON (AP) - The <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/food_and_drug_administration/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Food and Drug Administration approved the new swine flu vaccine, a long-anticipated step as the government works to start mass <http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/immunizations-general-overview/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>vaccinations next month. Limited supplies should start trickling out the first week of October --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to [email protected] OR go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
