The 49-year-old male patient from Delhi, who had tested positive for coronavirus on 4th April, was admitted at COVID facility at Max Hospital, New Delhi with moderate symptoms of fever and respiratory issues. His condition worsened in the next few days and was put to external oxygen to maintain saturation. He developed pneumonia with Type I respiratory failure and was then put on ventilator support on 8th April.

As the patient showed no improvement in his condition, his family had requested the hospital for the plasma therapy administration on compassionate grounds. It is a first of its kind treatment modality that was used for coronavirus disease in India.

The family members then arranged a donor for extracting plasma. The donor who had recovered from the coronavirus infection 3 weeks ago came forward to donate his plasma cells. He was tested again for COVID-19 and was negative at the time of donation along with other standard tests to rule out other infections.

The critically ill patient was then administered fresh plasma as a treatment modality to standard treatment protocols on the night of 14th April. After receiving this treatment, the patient showed progressive improvement. By the 4th day, he was off the ventilator support on 18th April 18 and has been continued on supplementary oxygen.

The patient has been shifted to a room with continuous monitoring and has started taking oral feed since Sunday. He is the first patient, who was administered plasma therapy at Max Hospital in Saket, and has shown positive results.

Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, Group Medical Director, Max Healthcare and Senior Director, Institute of Internal Medicine, said that they are delighted that the plasma therapy worked very well in his case that has open a new treatment opportunity in these pandemic. Other standard treatment protocols were followed during the patients treatment at Max Hospital.

He also said that in a country like India, such treatment has a good potential to help COVID-19 patients, who have moderate to severe disease severity. The government regulations should make such therapy more accessible for hospitals. One donor can donate 400 ml of plasma as it can save two lives. 200 ml is sufficient to treat one COVID-19 patient.

Source: ET Healthworld