Heart and Lung Bypass Machine Gives This Athelete Time to Heal!
When Kyle Beaulieu went to Lake Tahoe in July 2017 to participate in a Ragnar Relay race, he expected to come home a bit tired from running 17 miles in a 24-hour period. What he didn’t expect was the near-death experience that ensued less than a month later. Beaulieu is an endurance athlete. He swims, bikes, and runs, sometimes all three at the same event.
So when a fever of 103.7 degrees Fahrenheit kicked in on August 17, he went to see his primary-care doctor the next day. All signs pointed to the flu, and he was sent home to rest. Over the next 48 hours, Beaulieu’s fever remained above 102 degrees, and he began experiencing muscle spasms and breathing attacks.
After a harrowing night struggling to breathe, his girlfriend took him to the emergency room in Oakland, where he was immediately admitted, placed on oxygen, and tested for a number of conditions. An infectious diseases specialist suggested his symptoms and story resembled Hantavirus; a rare infection contracted from rodents that causes acute respiratory distress.
There is no medication to cure hantavirus, and it is fatal in almost 40 percent of cases, according to the CDC.
The quick thinking of a Stanford-trained physician led to the use of a life-saving technology to save a young man fighting a Hantavirus infection. He transferred him to Stanford Health Care, one of only two hospitals in the Bay Area with a life-saving technology called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).
VV ECMO Cleveland Clinic
What? ECMO for a virus infection?
It saved his life!
“Essentially, ECMO is a long-term cardiopulmonary bypass machine,” said Joe Hsu, M.D., assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Stanford Health Care. “What that means is that even when the heart and the lungs shut down, you’re able to sustain someone’s life. In this case, the machine essentially supported Beaulieu’s initial cardiopulmonary failure while his immune system fought the hantavirus.”
Within 24 to 48 hours on ECMO, Beaulieu showed signs of improvement. In just five days, he was taken off the machine, and was discharged a week after he was first admitted to Stanford. “To go from near death to immediately bouncing back was quite impressive,” said Hsu. “It was pretty much the best outcome you could get on ECMO.”
The patient:
“I’m really lucky to be in this area and that Stanford Health Care was able to accept me,” said Beaulieu, who is back at work full time and starting to exercise again. “Without ECMO, it’s very unlikely that I would have survived. I’m so grateful to everyone at Stanford and the hospital in Oakland for working together on my behalf to arrange the transfer. Even if there had been just a half-day delay, it might have been too late.”
At Stanford Health Care, the use of ECMO has greatly expanded, from just a handful of cases a decade ago to nearly 80 per year.
Could ECMO save this young doctor?
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