In September 2018, an eight-year-old boy was carried to a hospital in Changzhou, Jiangsu, China. His illness was fulminant myocarditis. It is very urgent illness that causes cardiac arrest due to sudden inflammation in the muscles surrounding the heart. Doctors urgently performed artificial respiration and cardiopulmonary resuscitation [CPR]. But the heart of the child did not revive.
In this urgent situation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation [ECMO]1 therapy was the only way to save the child. Unfortunately, the hospital was not equipped with that medical device and had to be supported by a larger hospital. It took five hours to transport and operate the complex equipment. However, the child who was on the verge of death could breathe again at the end of much meandering.
1. A life support machine that provides oxygen to the blood by inserting tubes in large blood vessels until the heart and lungs recover their functions.
Then, how could the dying boy be kept alive until the equipment was brought to the hospital? It was because nearly 30 doctors and nurses took it in turns to perform CPR on him for five straight hours. As the number of chest compressions should be done 100 times per minute, the medical staff members performed over 30,000 chest compressions in total.
It is generally known that ECMO therapy works within 60 minutes since CPR started. However, the medical staff’s devotion kept a dying boy alive for a time far exceeding the golden hour.