VCU Doctors Achieve Success Fighting Sepsis With High Levels of Vitamin CWhen Kelsey Martin fell ill, VCU Health Department of Surgery chair Vigneshwar Kasirajan, M.D., at the prompting of doctors at Inova Fair Oaks Hospital, traveled in VCU LifeEvac, the university’s helicopter transport, to treat her. Kasirajan brought with him a portable ECMO machine. The instrument drains blood from a patient’s vein, adds oxygen and removes carbon dioxide. It then warms the blood, and returns it to a large vein so the heart can pump the blood, with improved oxygen, through the body. Kelsey Martin likely would not have survived the night without the ECMO machine and the intravenous Vitamin C infusions initiated at VCU’s Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit.
