Forums > Social Discussion > Circling the drain

So I've taken a 2 1/2 year old girl. She came in with what looked like a little nose cold kind of thing...except she kept going limp and turning blue around the mouth.

So she did it right in front of us today. Turns out she's got fluid around her heart and her heart's infected with a virus. The muscle is damaged. Her heart is racing trying to keep the blood going to her organs...and yet her blood pressure keeps dropping...and her heart keeps going faster and faster...and because it's not pumping much blood with each stroke, it's not going anywhere. Her oxygen saturations are dropping. We keep giving her more and more oxygen.

The next step is ECMO, Extra-Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation...basically an artificial set of heart and lungs outside her body. ECMO is a BAD thing... The problem with ECMO is that once you go on it...it's tough to tell exactly when you can get off.

30% of children with a viral infection of the heart (viral myocarditis) recover fully.
30% have decreased cardiac function but can be managed with medication
30% require transplant.

So 60% of the time, the news is bad.

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura