ABSTRACT
Aim and objective: To elaborate the challenges faced by an ECMO patient and the issues to be overcome and how to address them and combat with the help of a multidisciplinary team. This is a case of a 34-year-old male patient without any comorbidities who tested positive for COVID on 08/07/21 who was on home quarantine for 8 days and reported to hospital on 16/07 in view of breathlessness, was started on oxygen, bipap and tried on remdesivir, steroids, and tocilizumab and baricitinib. The patient was not maintaining saturations and was intubated on 26/07 and as there was refractory hypoxaemia was initiated on ECMO on the next day. The patient was started on ceftazidime and levoflox along with voriconazole as serum galactomannan was positive and ET cultures showed Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. The patient was tracheostomized on 01/08 and was keeping well till 12/08 when there were episodes of desaturation and tachypnoea and blood culture showed Candida auris and BAL culture showed Chryseobacterium and MDR Klebsiella with NDM, OXA-48 AND VIM+. The patient developed septic shock and required dual vasopressors. BAL galactomannan had titres of 4.5 and the patient was initiated on a mixture of ceftazidime, avibactum, voriconazole, and anidulafungin. The patient started having hemoglobinuria subsequently and acute kidney injury secondary to this and required 3 sessions of dialysis and the whole ECMO circuit was changed. Improvement in the parameters followed with normalization of blood pressure and urine output too. When there was a sigh of relief as things were getting normal patient started having heavy bouts of tracheal bleeding and bronchoscopy was done again with endobronchial biopsy showing CMV endobronchitis with focal ulceration and was started on ganciclovir. There were maleana episodes too which normalized after initiation of antivirals and CMV enterocolitis was suspected to be the cause. Now the patient is on trial off mode with decannulation being planned.