A 45-year-old man regained consciousness after 29 days in a coma at the Wolfson Medical Center coronavirus ward. He has a preexisting condition which exacerbated his response to the coronavirus. On March 25, the patient was placed on an ECMO (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine, which provides prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to patients whose heart and lungs cannot provide enough oxygen to keep them alive. He woke up on Thursday. The hospital noted that the patient was saved by the dedicated treatment of the team of caretakers led by Dr. Ziv Roseman, Dr. Hagai Dekel and Dr. Arya Soroski. While he was admitted in serious condition, he is now in stable condition and is able to communicate with his wife and the hospital staff. Dr. Haggai Dekel, director of the Cardiac Surgery Department and Head of the ECMO department at the hospital, noted "Wolfson Hospital has very rich experience in using the ECMO device in children and adults who need a connection to the device after cardiac surgery. We are glad that we can use all the vast knowledge and experience we now have in the coronavirus crisis and save patients who need the device and actually save their lives. We are also very pleased when we are called in and out with a special team to other hospitals without an ECMO device to also connect patients there with ECMO and bring them to continue care by us at Wolfson." "It is important to note that the connection to the ECMO machine requires joint work with cardiac lung technicians and operating room nurses and without their help and professional ability, we would not have been able to operate our fully developed ECMO system," Dr. Dekel added. Dr. Arie Soroksky, Director of the Wolfson Intensive Care Departments, said: "Now that he is fully conscious and breathing on his own without any respiratory support, I would like to thank the wonderful physicians from the Department of Emergency Care who treated him: Dr. Julia Heifetz, Dr. Gersh Zehava, Dr. Boris Rosewski and all the wonderful staff at the hospital."
