The transfer was carried out by an Air Force plane.
The Health Service of the Balearic Islands airlifted a thirteen-month-old girl with extracorporeal oxygenation from the Son Espases University Hospital to the Vall d’Hebron Hospital (Barcelona). This is the first air transfer in the Balearic Islands of such a young paediatric patient with the extracorporeal oxygenation (ECMO) technique this year.
The transfer was carried out by a multidisciplinary team of professionals from the Paediatric ICU of Son Espases, the Hospital Vall d’Hebron and SAMU 061. The operation was coordinated in two phases: the first, in which an ambulance plane from SAMU 061 went to the Hospital Vall d’Hebron to pick up the team of five professionals who together with the team of professionals from Son Espases applied the ECMO technique to the patient, and a second phase, in which the patient was transferred to the Hospital Vall d’Hebron with the participation of the Balearic Paediatric Transport Unit, SAMU-061 of the Balearic Islands, the SEM of Catalonia and the Spanish Air Force.
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Health transfers a thirteen-month-old girl to the Vall d’Hebron Hospital with extracorporeal oxygenation
The Government of the Balearic Islands, through the Councillor for Health, Manuela García, yesterday urgently requested the Spanish government to activate an Air Force plane. Finally, at five in the morning, the patient arrived at the Paediatric ICU of the Vall d’Hebron Hospital.
The patient had suffered cardiorespiratory failure caused by an infectious process that made it necessary to treat her with ECMO in order to transfer her to a national reference centre. ECMO is a complex technique that provides cardiac and respiratory support (replaces the function of the lungs and heart in oxygenating the blood) to patients who have these organs severely affected and who cannot develop normal function on their own. ECMO ensures blood oxygenation for days or weeks; it consists of inserting a cannula into a central vein (femoral or jugular) and another cannula into an arterial (usually carotid in children) or central venous (femoral or jugular) line to establish a blood inflow and outflow circuit. The blood is propelled by a pump and connected to an oxygenator that performs the oxygenation before introducing it back into the organism.
This technique requires the multidisciplinary collaboration of various hospital services and professionals: the Paediatric ICU, the Paediatric Cardiology, Cardiac Surgery, Paediatric Surgery and Radiology services, perfusionists or cardiac surgery instrumentalists and paediatric transport staff.