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A lifesaving medical technology puts some patients on a “bridge to nowhere”
Manage episode 431602518 series 2513243
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, can be a lifesaving technology for patients whose organs have failed. It works, essentially, by performing the functions that a healthy person’s lungs and heart would normally do. While using the machine, many recipients of ECMO treatment can walk, talk, even ride a stationary bike, but they can’t leave the hospital with the machine, nor can they survive without it. In a recent article in The New Yorker, emergency physician and writer Clayton Dalton described these patients as “caught on a bridge to nowhere.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Dalton about the complicated ethics of this technology.
857 episodes
Manage episode 431602518 series 2513243
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, can be a lifesaving technology for patients whose organs have failed. It works, essentially, by performing the functions that a healthy person’s lungs and heart would normally do. While using the machine, many recipients of ECMO treatment can walk, talk, even ride a stationary bike, but they can’t leave the hospital with the machine, nor can they survive without it. In a recent article in The New Yorker, emergency physician and writer Clayton Dalton described these patients as “caught on a bridge to nowhere.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Dalton about the complicated ethics of this technology.
857 episodes
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