ECMO machine at Valley Children's Hospital helps save baby's life

MADERA, Calif. (KFSN) -- Victor and Melissa Echeverria never expected to be at Valley Children's Hospital worried about losing their daughter, especially less than a day after she was born.

The new parents describe Melissa's delivery as successful. Baby Vida was healthy.

But about four hours after she was born, a nurse went into the room to check on Melissa and Vida.

"She started to take a closer look at Vida, and she could just tell that something wasn't right, so she hit the panic button," Victor said. "Under like 30 seconds, I would say if even that, a NICU team from Clovis Community had rushed into the room and started working on her."

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Acting quickly, the team told the parents Vida needed to be taken to Valley Children's because she was in critical condition.

Melissa, who had just given birth, had to stay at Clovis Community. Victor followed the ambulance with Vida inside, who was taken to Valley Children's NICU - the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Victor learned Vida was going into heart failure, and Valley Children's wanted to get her on the ECMO machine.

It's not a cure or treatment, but ECMO oftentimes increases the chance a child will survive

"ECMO -- it stands for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation," says Dr. Nataly Shildt. "A big, fancy word for basically a life support modality that's temporary for patients who have severe lung, and or heart failure."

Melissa was released from Clovis Community and went straight to Valley Children's to see her baby, not knowing if that would be the last time.

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"It's just this massive room with this little baby in this little bassinet, and you just see all the doctors, the nurses and everybody so diligently working on their task so quickly," she said. "You know, they're all strangers, we don't know who they are, they don't know her. But their one goal is to save her."

That's exactly what happened.

"We were able to successfully get her off ECMO five days later, and we were able to get her home," Dr. Shildt said. "She's currently with her family, and she's thriving as a baby should."

Valley Children's never found out why Vida went into heart failure. Some doctors say her heart just wasn't quite ready to function, and the ECMO machine gave it that extra time to start working properly.

But as the Echeverrias hold Vida in their arms, they're just grateful for an ECMO team in Central California.

"We know that she was just too sick in order to make it from where she was, to be able to be airlifted somewhere else," Melissa said.

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