US Military CCATT – UTHealth Houston Mobile ECMO Joint Training
Recently the United States Critical Care Air Transport Team (CCATT) joined the UTHealth Houston Department of Emergency Medicine’s Mobile Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) Team for an intensive, hands-on skill training session focused on the many logistics and patient factors involved in out-of-hospital ECMO cannulation and transportation of cardiac arrest patients. The visiting CCATT Team included about a dozen highly trained and experienced military mobile ECMO critical care nurses and physicians seasoned by decades of real-world practice caring for the most critically ill and injured soldiers in remote theatres around the world. The US military’s CCATT supplem
ents standard aeromedical evacuation aircrew when critically sick patients require continuous monitoring, stabilization, or complex care while in-transit to a medical treatment facility-usually to get to a higher level of medical care.
“This collaboration with the CCATT is absolutely invaluable to our Emergency Medicine Team as we are preparing to launch our first of its kind mobile ECMO program aimed at saving lives from cardiac arrest outside the hospital.” – Dr. Richard Witkov, UTHealth Houston Emergency Medicine/Critical Care Physician and team leader. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is a leading cause of death in the US and every day roughly 1,000 people suffer cardiac arrest in the US and ~ 10% survive to go back home with their families. For more information on the 2022 AHA Heart and Stroke Statistics, please click here.
“We believe with this cutting-edge technology and mobile ECMO program, we have the opportunity to save many lives in Houston, people who otherwise would have died.” – Dr. Ben Bobrow, Chair of UTHealth Houston’s Department of Emergency Medicine.
This novel medical collaboration evolved from the official educational cooperative research partnership between The University of Texas System and United States Army Futures Command (AFC) designed to advance medical science and technology to save lives both on and off the battlefield. For more information on our partnership with the U.S. Army, please click here.
Generously donated by The Wyatt Ranches Foundation