FEATURED, FROM LEFT: Dr. Carlos Cárdenas, President, Board of Managers, DHR Health; Dr. Phillip Mason, Medical Director for Cardiothoracic and Transplant ICU, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio; and Dr. Andrew Phillips, Medical Director, ECMO Program, and Associate Medical Director, Intensive Care Unit, DHR Health. On Wednesday, March 7, 2024, Cárdenas, Mason and Phillips were joined by other medical professionals and community leaders at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance to mark the one-year anniversary of its EMCO Program, which is featured at DHR Health. The ECMO Program is the most advanced life support system in the world for critically-ill patients with cardiac or respiratory failure.
Photograph Courtesy DHR HEALTH FACEBOOK
••••••
ECMO Program, the world’s most advanced life support system for critically-ill patients with cardiac or respiratory failure, is another successful part of DHR Health’s “vision to create a world-class health system” for deep South Texas region
By DAVID A. DÍAZ
[email protected]
ECMO – the acronym for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Program – represents yet another major milestone in the mission and vision by DHR Health to create a world-class health system for deep South Texas.
An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word such as FBI, NASA, USA.
“ECMO is the most advanced life support system in the world used for critically ill patients with cardiac or respiratory failure. The system works by temporarily replacing the function of the heart and lungs, oxygenating the patient’s blood outside the body, then returning it back to the patient’s body,” said Dr. Andrew Phillips, Medical Director, ECMO Program, DHR Health. “The process provides support to the patient’s organs while allowing time for recovery or while awaiting further treatment.”
Dr. Manish Singh, Chief Executive Officer, DHR Health, offers a more basic but accurate explanation of ECMO to help the general public more easily understand.
“What exactly is ECMO, and why is it so crucial? My approach to response is very simple. ECMO is the last light of hope when traditional ventilators and blood pressure medications fall short in sustaining the life,” Singh declares.
The ECMO Program is a remarkable medical care system that is one of the many highly-sophisticated, life-saving resources of DHR Health’s Level One Trauma Center.
A Level One Trauma Center provides the highest level of surgical care to trauma patients.
A Level One Trauma Center is a hospital equipped and staffed to provide care for patients suffering from major traumatic injuries that result from falls, motor vehicle collisions, knife or gunshot wounds, or other catastrophes that threaten a person’s life or limbs.
The DHR Health Level One Trauma Center is located in its main hospital at 5501 S. McColl Road, Edinburg.
On Wednesday, March 6, 2024, Singh and Phillips were joined by other DHR Health officials, medical professionals and community leaders at the Edinburg Center at Renaissance to mark the one-year anniversary of its EMCO Program.
In addition to Phillips and Singh, speakers at the event featured:
- Marissa Castañeda, Senior Vice President, DHR Health;
- Dr. Jeffrey Skubic, DO, Medical Director, Level One Trauma Center, DHR Health;
- Dr. Phillip Mason, Medical Director for Cardiothoracic and Transplant ICU, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio;
- Bernadette S. Elliott, BSN, RN, Program Development Specialist, Our ECMO Team, San Antonio;
- Dr. R. DeWayne Edwards, DO, FACS, General Surgery, DHR Health;
- JoséE. Altamirano Brown, ECMO Program Trauma Patient, DHR Health;
- Jennifer Tobar, RN, DHR Health; and
- Dr. Carlos Cárdenas, Chairman, Board of Managers, DHR Health.
In applauding the first-year anniversary of the ECMO Program, Singh said the cutting-edge medical technology is part of “our vision and mission as to why DHR exists. We take immense pride in housing the world’s most-advanced life support system right here at DHR Health.”
Singh continued: “Our mission – and I am going to read it – ‘is to improve the well-being of those we serve, with a commitment to excellence for every patient, every encounter, every time. Our vision is to create a world-class health system to advance medicine and increase access for the communities we serve by empowering caregivers to heal through compassion, knowledge, innovation, individual care, and excellence.’”
When a patient undergoes ECMO placement, a multidisciplinary team of specialized medical experts, including intensivists, pulmonologists, cardiologists, perfusionists, nurses and others, work together to help stabilize the patient.
Following cannulation, whether through the neck, chest or groin, the patient receives ongoing support from a highly trained medical team, including additional staff at bedside 24 hours at day, who are specifically trained in ECMO management.
Cannulation is the insertion of an intravenous (IV) cannula involved in connecting a tube into a patient’s vein so that infusions can be inserted directly into the patient’s bloodstream.
https://www.medistudents.com/osce-skills/intravenous-cannulation
At the Wednesday, March 6, 2024 event, ECMO patients and their families were reunited with the DHR Health physicians and staff members who provided their treatment and support.
Making an inspirational appearance was José E. Altamirano Brown, whose life was saved by the ECMO Program for over a month, with the intensive medical care provided by the DHR Health Level One Trauma Team.
Additionally, the DHR Health Intensivists Group and Registered Nurse Martín Alvarado were honored with respective awards.
The DHR Health Intensivists Group was presented with The Phillip Mason Award, which is named after the critical care physician from San Antonio who worked closely with DHR Health to help set up the ECMO Program.
Dr. Juan Chávez, the medical director of the intensivist group, accepted The Phillip Mason Award on behalf of the DHR Health Intensivists Group.
Alvarado received the Bernadette Elliott Award, which is named after the nurse ECMO specialist from San Antonio who also worked closely with DHR Health to make the ECMO Program a reality for the hospital system.
Phillips, a Mission native, returned to the Rio Grande Valley in 2021 to start the ECMO Program, which launched in February 2023.
“Patients in the Rio Grande Valley now have the same access to the most advanced life support interventions as patients in other metropolitan areas – as they should,” said Phillips, who completed his residency and fellowship at Stanford University and was faculty in the cardiothoracic intensive care unit at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before returning to the Valley. “The equipment and techniques used at DHR Health are the same as these highly regarded institutions.
“The survival on ECMO is all comers, about 50/50, which sounds like terrible odds but it’s a lot better than one in 10,” Phillips emphasized. “So for select patients now, people who are too sick to make it out of the Valley to even go to Houston or San Antonio or such to get ECMO, that’s why it’s important to have it here.”
“All comers” is anyone who wants to take part in an activity.
Dr. Jeffrey Skubic, DO, Medical Director, Level One Trauma Center, DHR Health,agreed with Phillips’ views on the importance of the ECMO Program in many life-and-death situations.
“ECMO is very necessary to a Level One Trauma Center because you can’t really say you’re doing everything possible for a patient without the support of ECMO,” said Skubic. “It is rare that you need it, but when you do, the patient will die without it.”
For severely-ill individuals and their loved ones, ECMO serves as a ray of hope when ventilators and medications for blood pressure fail to sustain life. In these extreme cases, ECMO becomes the last resource capable of extending or even saving a life, with an overall survival of 50 percent for patients otherwise anticipated not to survive.
“We were the first ones to introduce it here and it truly is life-saving technology and now we have it and we have it here in the Rio Grande Valley. We have the ability to keep patients on ECMO long-term,” Skubic continued. “We have now gone to other facilities in the Valley who had requested our help and cannulated them (patients), put them on ECMO, and transported them back here to our hospital to keep them on ECMO. That’s ECMO Program and we now offer that service for the Rio Grande Valley.”
Even with the long list of distinguished speakers and prominent leaders at the DHR Health ECMO Program One-Year Anniversary event, several of the most important stars of the gathering were José E. Altamirano Brown, whose life was saved by ECMO, his wife April and their now eight-month old child.
“I had an ATV accident. The ATV landed on top of me and top of my chest. I destroyed my lungs and it broke all my ribs, my rib cage completely. I had two collapsed lungs. The only way I was able to survive was because of the EMCO Program,” he remembered that frightening crash.
An all-terrain vehicle, also known as a light utility vehicle, a quad bike or quad, as defined by the American National Standards Institute, is a vehicle that travels on low-pressure tires, has a seat that is straddled by the operator, and has handlebars.
“Thank you very much for your hard work. I really appreciate everything that you did to me. It’s very special that you kept me alive for my son,” Altamirano Brown continued. “This is what I wanted. I wanted to be a dad, and if it wasn’t for you, I would be gone.”
Dr. R. DeWayne Edwards, DO, FACS, General Surgery, DHR Health, was part of the medical team that treated Altamirano Brown, who had suffered disastrous injuries – and who would wind up being the first ECMO Program trauma patient for DHR Health.
“I spoke to his wife about the overall poor prognosis (medical prediction) that he had stuck out to me, and I remember for the rest of my life that she said, ‘Please, do everything you can for him because we have a one-month old,’” Edwards said. “I couldn’t imagine going through my life without having my father present, and I reached out to Dr. Phillips, and he immediately said, ‘Yes, I will evaluate this gentleman and see what we can do to get him oxygenated, and get him through this.’”
Oxygenation is the addition of oxygen to any system, including the human body. Oxygenation may also refer to the process of treating a patient with oxygen, or of combining a medication or other substance with oxygen.
https://medictests.com/units/oxygenation-ventilation-and-respiration
He knew Altamirano Brown would not be able to survive a trip by ground or air ambulance to hospitals in San Antonio or Houston, so Edwards called in Phillips, who placed Altamirano Brown on DHR Health’s new EMCO Program, which allowed Brown’s lungs to rest and heal.
Edwards and his team would go on to operate on Altamirano Brown two times, and keep him alive to begin his ongoing recovery.
“I think that without ECMO and the support that ECMO offered him, and the team of people that put ECMO together and support ECMO, I believe this gentleman would have died from his injuries without question,” Edwards said. “That’s kind of how EMCO helps support a trauma program, and we have it here now. I think we’re going to be able to support more patients in the future.”
Cárdenas, DHR Health’s Chairman, Board of Managers, extended his praise to all individuals involved in Brown’s remarkable journey back to his life and family.
“I know everybody in this room was struck with what I was struck with, and I’m going to say it in one word: corazon (heart). It says it all,” he reflected.
“It’s how this whole thing (DHR Health) started when we began as a small ambulatory surgical center and opened our doors in 1997, and had a vision to change and bring equity, close the disparities in health care to an area of the country and the state that had been heretofore ignored,” Cárdenas proclaimed. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job.”
To view the full video of the event, please log on to:
https://www.facebook.com/DHRhealth/videos/271314172680566
DHR Health operates two general acute hospitals, the only dedicated women’s hospital south of San Antonio, a rehabilitation hospital, a behavioral hospital, and more than 70 clinics Valley-wide.
DHR Health offers the most comprehensive and sophisticated healthcare services in the Rio Grande Valley including – but not limited to – advanced cancer services, the only transplant program in the Rio Grande Valley, and as of September 8, 2021, the first 24/7 Designated Level One Trauma Center south of San Antonio.
••••••
Verónica R. Yunes contributed to this article. For more on this and other Texas legislative news stories that affect the Rio Grande Valley metropolitan region, please log on to Titans of the Texas Legislature (TitansoftheTexasLegislature.com).
