Shenzhen People’s Hospital inked an agreement with a medical team from the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University yesterday to strengthen cooperation in critical care medicine in order to improve relevant clinical services, research and training.
The medical team was led by Li Yimin, a prominent expert in critical care medicine in China and a standing committee member of the Chinese Medical Association. He was awarded by the Ministry of Health for his contribution in fighting SARS in Guangzhou after the disease’s outbreak in 2002.
An Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) Center jointly launched by both sides was inaugurated at the Shenzhen hospital yesterday. According to Liu Xueyan, head of the hospital’s ICU department, ECMO is an extracorporeal technique for providing both cardiac and respiratory support to persons whose heart and lungs are unable to provide an adequate amount of gas exchange to sustain life.
Liu said that the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University has the largest ECMO center in South China, while the ECMO technology in Shenzhen is underdeveloped. “The expert team from Guangzhou is experienced and we hope that the cooperation can promote the development of ECMO technology in Shenzhen,” Liu said.
The two hospitals will also join hands to improve the diagnosis and treatment of sepsis, a life-threatening condition that arises when the body’s response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs, as well as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a syndrome that usually comes with sudden and critical lung failure and can occur in people who are critically ill or have major injuries.
Shenzhen People’s Hospital is the first hospital with an ICU department in Shenzhen. The department receives an average of over 1,100 patients each year, and around 83 percent of the patients are successfully treated, according to the hospital.
