It's not every day that you hear about a doctor needing saving but that's just what happened at UF Health.
UF health is one of the only health care providers in our area that houses an adult ECMO program. ECMO stands for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation for Adult Respiratory Failure and basically, it's a machine that allows doctors to completely turn off your lungs.
It all started when an emergency room doctor at UF Health had trouble breathing. As it turns out, he had a severe case of pneumonia.
Luis E. Rios Jr.'s condition deteriorated so quickly he ended up being placed on a ventilator.
"I was very close to death," he tells First Coast News. "For a week they managed me and suctioned to get all the drainage and blood out. They saved me."
Here's how teh amazing machine works. The patient's blood is cycled through the machine which introduced oxygen and lets the lungs relax so they can heal in the most critical of cases.