United States: As the experts say, the cases of patients rescued from cardiac arrest by standard resuscitation protocols for CPR are rather exceptional.
Moreover, sometimes, even in an environment that is supposedly well-equipped with medical personnel, equipment, and drugs, if a person is not revived within 40 minutes after the initial collapse when the CPR commenced, the chances of that person being resuscitated survive is regarded as zero.
Patients who are reported to have certain problems with cardiac arrest and who are treated in a new way via ECPR have as much as a 90 percent rate of being revived if their brain function is totally okay and if the treatment is administered within 30 minutes of the collapse.
On the other hand, after a period of 40 minutes, the chance of restoration also remains 50 percent.
The survival rate for victims of cardiac arrest seems to be stuck at a very low level over the last many decades.
CPR Vs. ECPR
CPR ( Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) is generally carried out by bystanders when a person collapses along with no apparent pulse movement. It is done while awaiting professional help to arrive.
In case of the availability of an emergency defibrillator nearby, it could be used to give the heart a shock of electricity, which causes it to beat again.
In the E.R., doctors will continue with their chest compressions and carry on with other standard measures used for resuscitation, such as breathing tube insertion, medication administration, and even electricity, shocking the patient again.
More about ECPR
Presently, only a few hospitals are using the new approach. Patients who have suffered cardiac arrest can be connected with an ECMO machine, which takes over their heart and lungs.
When this highly advanced treatment is administered for curing cardiac arrest, the treatment is called ECPR.
It is not ECPR that actually cures anything by itself. However, when fresh oxygen-rich blood is supplied to the brain and other organs, it allows the body to rest while the problem is being treated by the doctor, if it can be treated.
Individuals who are in the correct rhythm for being shocked with a defibrillator do way much better because their cause will most likely be treatable.
Complications related to ECPR
ECPR is a high-end, complicated treatment that only few doctors can perform. It might also develop some additional problems of its own.
However, CPR, as such, comes with its own danger and poses the risk of breaking ribs and crushing the organs of the patients.
The big cannulas that should be inserted into the patient’s vessels and that from the groins pass all the way up to the heart can lead to the perforation of major organs and bleeding from the blood vessels.
Or the procedure could fail to work out since the process is in a very complex, stressful, and tense condition and being executed amid ongoing CPR.
After joining the patient with the ECMO machine, a catheter supplies the patient’s leg with the necessary blood supply; otherwise, it could also die.
ECMO machines are linked to blood clots, so an anticoagulating drug is administered, due to which sustained bleeding can also result from this, leading to a life-threatening outcome.
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