A patient whose life was saved with emergency surgical intervention at Cho Ray Hospital. (Photo courtesy of Cho Ray Hospital) HCMCity (VNA/ANN) - A 70-year-old Japanese tourist wasadmitted to Cho Ray Hospital in HCM City on Lunar New Year’s Eve with a suddenonset of severe chest pain.
Mikochihad chest pain and passed out just as his flight was arriving at Tan Son NhatAirport.
He wassent to an international clinic for immediate resuscitative efforts andtransferred to Cho Ray Hospital’s emergency department due to his criticalcondition.
He wasdiagnosed with Stanford type A acute aortic dissection, which requires earlytreatment for survival, Nguyen Thai An, head of the cardiac surgery department,said.
Trauma red alert,the highest level, was activated and an operating room was readied within 60minutes, he said.
Administrativeprocedures were skipped to carry out the life-saving surgery immediately, hesaid.
Allthe members of the hospital’s rapid response team were present in the surgeryroom though it was New Year’s Eve.
In theevent, the surgical intervention saved the patient’s life. He was dischargedsix days later in stable condition.
TruongThe Hiep, deputy head of the hospital’s emergency department, said it receivesan average of 350 patients every day, most of them with multiple injuries.
Athird of them need emergency surgical intervention, he said.
Insome cases doctors have to provide cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and performsurgery at the emergency department’s surgery room since any delay could befatal, he said.
Thehospital’s rapid response system helps save dozens of critically ill patientsevery year.
Sincepaediatrics trauma alert red was initiated in 2008, doctors at the HCM CityPaediatrics No.1 Hospital have performed around 20 emergency surgeries requiredupon its activation.
Inter-hospitalalert
LastSeptember Nguyen Thi Hieu Thao, 20, of Hoc Mon District suddenly developedsevere eclampsia when she was nine months pregnant and was admitted to ThongNhat Hospital for emergency attention.
Shewas in a coma, her blood pressure was a high 210/120 mm Hg. She later went intocardiac and respiratory arrest.
Doctorsprovided cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and called Hung Vuong Obstetrics andGynaecology Hospital’s emergency response team for immediate surgicalintervention.
HungVuong’s rapid response team of obstetricians, medical assistants and nursesperformed a caesarean section to deliver the baby within 20 minutes of theactivation of the alert.
Thaoand her 3.4kg boy soon became stable and were discharged a one week later.
NguyenThi Le, Thao’s mother, said, overwhelmed: “It was like a miracle. I almostpassed out. I thought my daughter would die.
“Thedoctors were so good they could save the life of mother and son.”
“Assoon as we receive an alert call, we have to act rapidly and concentrateintensely,” Nguyen Thi Anh Phuong, deputy head of Hung Vuong Hospital’sobstetrics department, said.
“Thegoal is to save the patient’s life.”
Phuonghas twice been on the rapid response team to provide emergency out-of-hospitalsurgical care.
Thesuccessful operation on Thao was attributed to close co-ordination betweendoctors at the two hospitals and the activation of the alert, which circumventsprocedures and facilitates immediate surgery.
It wasone of six out-of-hospital surgeries performed since the city Departmentof Health introduced the inter-hospital alert last year.
City-wideexpansion
TangChi Thuong, deputy director of the department, said the inter-hospital alertfor rapid response emergencies is a life-saving measure for critically illpatients who would otherwise die on the way to hospital.
“Co-ordinatedaction by multi-disciplinary physicians and hospitals are crucial to successfulemergency life-saving surgical intervention.”
Thedepartment has recommended implementation of hospital-wide and inter-hospitalalerts across the city to improve survival rates.
Cho RayHospital plans to set up surgery rooms in various departments to simplifythe process for emergency surgeries, Pham The Viet, head of the hospital’sgeneral planning department, said.
Thenumber of patients admitted to Cho Ray Hospital with life-threateningconditions has soared in the past few years, he said.
Lastyear there were 15 cases that triggered trauma alert red, and doctors managedto save 10 of the patients.
In thefirst two months of this year there have already been eight, Viet said.
Theactivation of hospital-wide alerts should also be standardised with anintegrated set of co-ordinated actions so that it can operate smoothly andeffectively, he added.- VNA
VNA
