Their study found that 63 percent of the patients in respiratory failure who were selected for the lung bypass technique survived for at least six months without disability, compared with 47 percent assigned to receive conventional ventilation.
The finding, reported yesterday in the medical journal The Lancet, suggests the bypass equipment made by companies including Medtronic could rescue more severe swine flu cases.
In Australia’s New South Wales state, one in seven patients critically ill with the new H1N1 strain received the procedure, known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or ECMO.
“We have already used ECMO during the first wave of the pandemic with good effect,” said Giles Peek, a surgeon at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, England, and lead author of the study, in a statement.
“We are expecting ECMO to prove an invaluable weapon in the fight against the winter resurgence of the infection,” Peek said.
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