Cutting edge tech a lifesaver for dad, 33
Two of his sisters died of cystic fibrosis and Nick Kanaan might have been the third in his family to die from the disease if not for a double lung transplant and the medical technology he was connected to at Vancouver General Hospital while awaiting donor lungs.
Six months after the transplant, the 33-year-old father of a toddler was jogging for exercise, a feat he couldn’t even fathom after enduring six years of failing lungs that crippled his energy levels and put him in the hospital with endless infections in his scarred, bleeding lungs.
Kanaan, who lives in Metro Vancouver, was hospitalized at St. Paul’s on Valentine’s Day and transferred to VGH in May, a month after being put on the transplant list. He was so ill that his medical team believed he might die while waiting.
So Kanaan was put in an induced coma in a bid to stabilize his heart and other functions. He was hooked up to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine. It is a form of life support in which blood is drained from the vascular system, circulated outside the body by a mechanical pump, fully saturated with oxygen and scrubbed of carbon dioxide. It is then pumped back into the patient.
More than 130 VGH patients have been put on an ECMO in the last five years and the hospital is the first in Canada to achieve gold-level status from the non-profit Extracorporeal Life Support Organization for its ECMO program.
In 2016, Vancouver resident Willie Dalagan was the first lung transplant patient in B.C. to be put on an ECMO machine while he waited for a lung transplant. That success has led to many others. An Academy Award-winning filmmaker who was put on ECMO dedicated her latest film to her VGH medical team.
Dr. Hussein Kanji, a specialist in caring for critically ill patients, is co-director of the ECMO program at VGH. He said the hospital’s survival rate for patients after being on ECMO is 74 per cent, compared to the international average of 61 per cent.
“Our gold-level status is a testament to the dedication of our group, which includes specialized nurses, perfusionists, physical and respiratory therapists, physicians, pharmacists and many other health professionals who are all part of the dedicated team. Our success is something I’m proud of and it’s a function of every person who’s part of this team.”
There are nine ECMO machines at VGH — each costs about $200,000 — and others are placed in an additional four hospitals across B.C.
Kanji said that before ECMO, “we couldn’t keep patients alive long enough to get their transplant, but now patients like Nick can stay on ECMO long enough to get their transplants and increase their chances of survival.”
Besides being used as a bridge to lung or heart transplants, ECMO is increasingly being viewed as a better mechanical life-support system with potentially fewer adverse effects than conventional systems. Last year, 38 patients at VGH were placed on ECMO machines, two-thirds of them for respiratory reasons and a third for cardiac problems
Kanaan said it’s clear that if not for the 3½ weeks he was on ECMO, he “would not be here today.”
The area manager for Samsung retail stores said while he’s enormously grateful to the health professionals at St. Paul’s and VGH, “there isn’t a day that goes by when
I don’t think about the donor. I don’t know anything about the donor except their lungs were a perfect match. But I will soon sit down to write a letter that will hopefully be passed on to the family.”
Kanaan said the pair of lungs was the second set he was offered. The first pair turned out to be unsuitable because they were infected with influenza and his health status was too fragile to take a chance on them.
Kanaan’s condition was so precarious that he had two strokes, one before the transplant and one after. He has fully recovered from them.
His health now is so strong that he’s stopped taking several drugs he was previously on for his cystic fibrosis. His coughing fits are a thing of the past.
While he’s on drugs for life to help prevent rejection of the transplanted organs, along with antibiotics and low-dose aspirin, doctors are optimistic that Kanaan will now have a normal life expectancy.
“My daughter took her first steps while I was on ECMO and when I woke up from the coma, she was saying words. Before the transplant, I had this nightmarish fear that my daughter would run away from me at the park and I wouldn’t be able to catch her. But since I was discharged from hospital in July and then GF Strong, where I did rehab in August, I’ve regained the 65 pounds I lost while wasting away in the hospital.
“I was so weak I could not even hold a spoon to my mouth,” he said.