SAN ANTONIO — A local doctor and nurse embarked on a life-saving mission in the skies, their international journey not only helping a critically ill patient but resulting in a record-breaking flight.
Medical professionals of ECMO Transport, a flight-transfer program based in San Antonio, broke the world record for the longest flight of its kind. ECMO, which stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and has been used to save COVID-19 patients, helps those suffering from heart or lung failure until they can get a transplant or higher level of care.
“It’s a machine that pumps blood out of the body and puts oxygen into it and removes the carbon dioxide. Then, takes that blood and puts it back into the body,” explained Dr. Jeffrey DellaVolpe, medical director of the adult ECMO program at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio and medical director of the cardiovascular intensive care unit at Methodist Healthcare and the Texas IPS Critical Care Service Line.
The flight was organized to transport an international patient who was visiting the states when he became ill, and it was led by DellaVolpe. Joining him were other staff members including Bradford Anderson, a registered nurse.
On August 13, his team flew from Portland, Oregon and landed more than 7,500 miles away in Dubai two days later. Along the way they made stops in five different countries to refuel their aircraft and change flight crews.
“We would tell each other like, 'Hey you can take 30 minutes here, you take 30 minutes there.' We would make that we stayed rested up, that we were eating,” Anderson recalled.
“It involves a four-man team with about the space of a small van, along with a patient with all of his life-support equipment. You can imagine how cramped that could be,” DellaVolpe added. “Anything could go wrong at any point.”
Their journey took 30-and-a-half hours, good for the longest ECMO transport flight ever recorded. The previous record-long transport flight was 6,500 miles and lasting more than 21 hours.
“I think, for me, it just highlights how awesome it is that we can really connect to these patients and kind of in their worst times and be able to get them to where they want to go,” said Anderson.
“Distance and no length of space should be a barrier,” DellaVolpe said.