ECMO

We dare you to not cry.

This inspiring video recounts the story of Elizabeth Asher, who almost lost her life, and that of her prematurely born son, Leo, after she developed life-threatening complications while 22 weeks pregnant. Although all of her vital organs shut down and she was bleeding profusely throughout her body, Lizzie survived thanks to the teamwork of more than a dozen specialists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

Born at less than one kilo at 22 weeks gestation, baby Leo is now thriving too, thanks to the hospital’s dedicated neonatal and perinatal specialists who cared for him for the first five and a half months of his life.

According to Daniel Brodie, MD, Director of the Medical ECMO Program at the NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, “When we put people on ECMO, people are very, very sick. And then there’s Lizzie. She was already dead. Or mostly dead… It was very hard to ignore the fact that if we didn’t save her, there would be a child without a mother.” But together with Matthew Bacchetta, MD, Director of the Adult ECMO Program, they did the impossible, once again demonstrating their unparalleled expertise with novel applications of ECMO.

The doctors, Lizzie, and her husband explain what happened in this highly moving account. Have a tissue handy.

Read more in a description of the family’s amazing story in the blog post Fighting for Their Lives.

Other stories of amazing recoveries with ECMO can be found on the blog by clicking on the ECMO tag.

Tagged as: Bacchetta, Brodie, ECMO

{ 0 comments }