Jet Rescue Air Ambulance has completed the longest extra corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) flight ever carried out by a civilian aeromedical programme. The flight transported a 56-year-old female patient and citizen of South Korea, who was hospitalised in Mexico and required emergency transfer to her homeland for lung transplantation. The flight originated in Monterrey International airport in Mexico and concluded 6,500 miles away and 21 hours later at Incheon International airport near Seoul, South Korea. The two previous long distance ECMO flights of an adult patient were performed by the US Air Force from Germany to the USA and from Japan to the USA.

Mexico has a lung transplant programme in Monterrey but due to the COVID situation, the patient's family decided to to have the transplant performed in Korea. “Following extensive consultations with our medical director and the patient's ECMO team, I decided to accept this exceptionally challenging mission,” says Carlos Salinas, founder and CEO of Jet Rescue Air Ambulance. “I had every confidence in our medical team, medical equipment and Learjet 36 aircraft. Our Learjet 36, long-range flying ICU, performed perfectly. We made fuel and oxygen stops in Vancouver in Canada, Anchorage in Alaska, Petropavlosk and Kamalhalouskv in Russia and finally landed as planned, on time, at Incheon International Airport in South Korea.“

“Clearly, this transport was one of the most challenging ever undertaken by any private air ambulance service,” adds Dr. Cervantes, Jet Rescue Air Ambulance's chief flight physician. "As a critical care physician I was comfortable in our ability to execute this mission, yet remained concerned because it was not possible to determine how the patient's delicate haemodynamic condition would react during such a long flight. Nevertheless, thanks to exceptional collaboration with the transplant medical team at Christus Muguerza Hospital in Monterrey and the professionalism of their ECMO staff the patient remained stable throughout the long flight. I was relieved and gratified to hand over her care to the receiving hospital in Seoul.”