National Taiwan University Children’s Hospital has established a critical care transport team to provide intensive care to children being transported by ambulance.
It yesterday cited the recent case of a 10-day-old boy surnamed Wu (吳) in Changhua County who went into acute respiratory distress and started to turn blue at about midnight, so his parents immediately called an ambulance to take him to a local hospital, where he was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect.
Their doctor referred them to the Taipei-based children’s hospital, which dispatched the team to transport Wu, with team members carefully monitoring his health in the ambulance throughout the long drive from central Taiwan, it said.
He was safely admitted to the intensive care unit at the children’s hospital, underwent a successful surgery and was discharged when he was about one-month old, it added.
The critical care transport team was established in February and has treated more than 150 children, including nearly 70 children who were picked up by the team, the hospital said, adding that the service could be used to extend its medical expertise to remote areas.
Medical equipment in ambulances is usually simple and intended for use on adults, but the team’s specialized ambulance is equipped with a stretcher, an ultrasound machine, a medical-grade ventilator, a syringe pump, an incubator, monitoring devices and medicine especially for children, Department of Emergency Medicine pediatric cardiologist Lee Meng-chang (李孟旃) said.
In addition, the team includes pediatricians and specialized nurses who travel in the ambulance during transport to ensure that children receive any intensive care they need, she said, adding that the team has been deployed to pick up patients as far as Kaohsiung and Hualien County.
Most patients the team has transported are children with acute illnesses, such as congenital heart defects or liver disease, as well as premature births, Lee said, adding that the team only accepts cases referred by other medical teams.
Stabilizing a child’s condition during transportation is of paramount importance, so the team aims to reduce risk by providing seamless care from the moment they pick up a patient, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit director Chou Hung-chieh (周弘傑) said.
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