Page 47 - ANZCP Gazette APRIL 2022

Grace Agbulos CCP, FANZCP Westmead Hospital, NSW
and more TAVI cases. Before we knew it, our three ICUs were full, requiring us to transfer our cardiac cases to neighbouring private hospitals for surgery. The number of COVID patients admitted in NSW hospitals had another peak in October 2021 with the Delta

The start of the year 2021 gave Westmead Hospital many challenges in the face of testing times. One challenge was the building of the Westmead Health Precinct. This incredible building has risen during a pandemic with the numerous staff moving seamlessly into their new home while never missing a beat with patient care,
After 43 years, the time has come to transition our services to the new central acute services building that was officially opened in March 2021. It is a $1 billion complex and precinct – which will be both a health centre of and an education centre of excellence. This new state-of-the-art health facility will serve western Sydney’s health needs for generations to come with world-class treatment, research and education capacity embedded on every floor.”
Staff and services began relocating into the new hospital building in the middle of February 2021, with both the adult and children’s emergency departments now open to the public.
Key features of the new central acute services building include:
• Two new emergency departments, one for adults and one for children
• 25 digital operating theatres • More than 300 patient rooms
• One and a half floors for the University of Sydney to further integrate education, research, and health services.
Plus, there are updates for the Westmead Institute for Medical Research, Children’s Medical Research Institute, Westmead Hospital Foundation, and the Parramatta Light Rail.
The Westmead Health Precinct is now one of the largest health, education, research, and training precincts in Australia – employing more than 18,000 people across the biomedical, health and life sciences fields.
Westmead Hospital became one of the three major vaccination hubs of Sydney besides Royal Prince Alfred and Liverpool Hospital.
April 2021 came, and Mother Nature’s wildest weather arrived in the most unexpected way. Westmead Hospital was caught in the ‘eye of the storm’. Indeed, she lashed out with the cyclone’s greatest fury – increased COVID-19 cases of the Delta strain followed by increased ICU admissions mostly requiring ECMO support. There were also increased ECMO-CPR (ECPR), VT ablation (with some needing ECMO support),
variant. Intensive care units braced for another storm. The need to put patients on ECMO increased even though there was a downward trend in November to December 2021.
The ECMO case load had jumped in 2021 (Figure 1) – as we would expect with COVID-19 and an ECPR program. We had 42 referrals, of which 12 were for VV-ECMO (including nine COVID cases), 30 were for VA-ECMO (of which 10 cases proceeded to ECMO including four being ECPR cases). To put this into perspective, in the six months preceding the ECMO COVID-19 surge, St Vincent’s and Westmead Hospital had performed the same amount of ECMO runs. Overall, Westmead Hospital became the third busiest ECMO centre in NSW. Amazingly, we had a 95% survival rate in 2021 – the two deaths were both VA-ECMO cases with one being an ECPR.
With the newer COVID-19 Omicron variant, another spike of cases occurred in January 2022 with both Delta and Omicron variants being treated – although there were fewer ECMO needed this time due to more vaccinated patients. But there were many staff who became COVID-19 positive due to the highly contagious nature of Omicron variant.
The Perfusion team of Westmead Hospital was heavily involved in the increased activity of our ECMO programme that included putting COVID-19 patients on ECMO, ECPR and retrieval of patients that were transferred to St. Vincent’s Hospital.
Despite all the challenges encountered during the pandemic, we had lots of happy endings – shown in the faces of our COVID survivors.
With restrictions easing in late February 2022, our cardiac patients are slowly returning to the public sector and there are now more private cases operated in the private hospitals.
Earlier this year of 2022, we welcomed two trainee Perfusionists from Children’s Hospital at Westmead – Alistair Sinden and Andrew Rowan. They will spend three months
APRIL 2022 | www.anzcp.org 44