Ning Zhou, MD, PhD, who works at a hospital in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the new coronavirus pandemic, said that critically ill COVID-19 patients will likely develop hypoxemia, or low levels of oxygen in the blood, while on ventilators and will require extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a life support machine that replaces the function of the heart and lungs.
But extracorporeal membrane oxygenation should be administered early in treatment, not when the patient is dying, Dr. Zhou said.
“Don’t wait. You lose the opportunity, especially for those young patients. ECMO [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation] is not for prolonging life for days. It’s an opportunity for patients to survive,” he said, according to MedPage Today.
Patients older than 70 years and those with irreversible, severe brain injury are less likely to recover with the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, he said.
The physicians all said that older physicians should not be on the front lines of care during the pandemic. In China, physicians older than 60 years are banned from providing care to COVID-19 patients.
More articles on integration and physician issues:
University of Toledo Medical Center physicians no longer required to be faculty
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42% of providers say COVID-19 is a mild threat: 3 survey findings
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