ECMO Advantage partners with AirMed

(Birmingham, AL – December 14, 2009) AirMed International, the leading U.S. air ambulance company, announced today that it has entered a cooperative partnership with Tennessee-based ECMO Advantage to provide this life-saving medical equipment onboard its aircraft with ECMO Advantage medical professionals assisting in the transport.

“Many of our customers have requested the transport of patients requiring the support of this highly specialized treatment and equipment during the flight,” said AirMed Executive Vice President Denise Treadwell. “We are very pleased at this new relationship with ECMO Advantage, undoubtedly the leader in this field. This partnership will allow AirMed and ECMO Advantage to provide safe transport of these patients to recognized ECMO Centers around the nation while maintaining quality patient care."

In intensive care medicine, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is an extracorporeal technique of providing both cardiac and respiratory support oxygen to patients whose heart and lungs are so severely diseased or damaged that they can no longer serve their function. An ECMO machine is similar to a heart/lung machine and is most commonly used in neonatal intensive-care units, for newborns in pulmonary distress, but it is also used for adults that, even with the use of a ventilator, need to be oxygenated until they are able to do the job with out assistance. One of the new uses is in adults with the H1N1 virus. ECMO treatment provides oxygenation until their lung function has sufficiently recovered to maintain appropriate O2 saturation.

About the air ambulance company AirMed International