Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/drhowardsmithreports/reel/DE3BTQTtVlh/ Without oxygen we die.  In some cases, it is impossible to establish a pathway into the lungs and sometime the lungs are unable to transmit oxygen into the bloodstream.  One solution to such problems has been ECMO or extra-corporeal membrane oxygenators or mechanical lungs that facilitate direct oxygen passage into red blood cells.  Problem is that ECMO machines aren’t portable and require surgical connections to a patient’s bloodstream. Bioengineers at Boston Children's Hospital now have a more portable approach for directly delivering lifesaving oxygen into a patient’s bloodstream.  Fifteen years of scientific work have led to the development of lipid-coated polymer oxygen microbubbles or LOMs.  Injected directly into the bloodstream, these micro-carriers rapidly dissolve and release microbubbles of oxygen that can be safely absorbed by red cells.  Ample quantities of these LOMs can be stored for emergency use. Following this suc