Trying Last-Ditch Lung Bypass for Worst Swine Flu

[steven johnson]

The CDC extimates that swine flu has hospitalized 98,000 Americans in the past six months, and killed nearly 4,000.

Australian researchers reported last month that with ECMO thay had 71 percent survival and predicted some 800 people might be ECMO candidates if the U.S. experienced similar rates of swine flu. A British study published last month found that nearly two-thirds of adults randomly assigned to ECMO survived other types of respiratory failure while just 47 percent survived with regular ICU care. The initial data from the Michigan ECMO registry suggests survival can reach 72 percent if recipients get it within six days of using a ventilator but with longer ventilator use, the survival rate plummets.

It looks like there is a very expensive treatment for end stage respiratory failure from the swine flu if it can be implemented in time.

A technology originally developed for premature babies may be helping to save some of the sickest swine flu patients by rerouting their blood so their lungs can rest.

It's a risky approach using equipment that only certain specialized hospitals have. But faced with children and young adults struggling to breathe despite ventilators has intensive-care doctors dusting off these machines, named ECMO, that they often consider last-ditch and almost never use for influenza.

No one knows which patients are most likely to benefit -- not everyone does. But ECMO is gaining attention after Australian researchers reported that the machines helped during that country's outbreak of what scientists call the 2009 H1N1 flu strain. A voluntary U.S.-based registry counts 107 critically ill swine flu patients recently treated with ECMO, most from this country.

Enter ECMO, decades-old technology that essentially offers a temporary lung bypass. Tubes carry blood out of the body so a filter can remove carbon dioxide and reinfuse oxygen, and then dump the blood back.

Trying Last-Ditch Lung Bypass for Worst Swine Flu

[Techn0Girl]

1. A Little Perspective....

Every Year, 36,000 Americans die of a seasonal flu .
That number comes direct from the CDC.
This year over 25,000 Americans will die from influenza other than H!N1.
This year the number of Americans who will die of H1N1 will be less than 8000 (only 4000 so far this year).

Obviously regular seasonal flu kills 3 times more Americans than H1N1 and is a bigger threat to American health.

So why the big media scare over H1N1?

Perhaps these numbers will help:

1. A swine flu shot costs our government roughly $20 a shot.
( from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/162998.php )

2. There will be 114 million shots bought by our government this year

3. Total sales in H1N1 vaccine by the largest manufacturers were over one billion dollars for just two months orders in the U.S.
(from https://www.medicalcountermeasures.gov/BARDA/MCM/panflu/factsheet.aspx)

Make no mistake H1N1 vaccine is BIG business - and business is booming despite the fact that regular seasonal flu kills three times more Americans than H1N1.

Now let's look at how the H1N1 vaccine manufacturers stocks are doing since March (that last big H1N1 scare)
( from http://shockedinvestor.blogspot.com/2009/09/h1n1-vaccine-manufacturers-stocks-that.html )

Novartis - up from 33 in March to 47 in November - a THIRTY PERCENT PLUS INCREASE

GLAXOSMITHKLINE - up from 27 in March to 39 in November - a THIRTY PERCENT PLUS INCREASE

SANOFI-AVENTIS - up from 24 in March to 34 in November - a FORTY PERCENT PLUS INCREASE

SINOVAC (China) - up from 1 in March to 9 in November - a NINE HUNDRED PERCENT PLUS INCREASE


Any of your own stocks go up 30 percent in half a year? How's that 401K looking for 'ya ?

We all know how the Pharmaceutical companies have been spending hundreds of millions buying up politicians and running hugely biased ad campaigns against health care. We all know that and read about it here weekly in DU.

Does anybody believe that they are playing nice and straight with the the media regarding H1N1? They just made well over a billion dollars in sales and climbing. What do you think?

Me? I think the only swine here may be the pork coming into Big Pharma companies.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

2. So are you saying that 25,000 Americans will die from a strain of the flu other than H1N1?

Or is the CDC saying that?