Podcast: Inside ECMO - Supporting the Sickest Heart Patients
Since being diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Kathy Johnson has lived an extraordinary medical odyssey.
From pediatric cancer to cardiac crisis, the 65-year-old Williston resident has approached a lifetime’s worth of serious medical issues, diagnoses and treatments with an irrepressible, take-on-all-comers attitude.
In 2024, Kathy Johnson and her care team faced a new challenge: How to make the risky and complex heart procedures she desperately needed at all possible. Damage to Johnson's heart from cancer treatment decades ago not only gave her coronary artery disease — it had calcified her arteries, making many conventional and minimally-invasive surgeries impossible.
Join us as we follow Johnson's story of resilience through the years and meet the surgeons and interventional cardiologists who planned and performed a first-of-its-kind procedure in the catheter lab at University of Vermont Medical Center — where they used an advanced form of life support called Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) to sustain Johnson and repair major damage to her heart.
About Living Healthy Together
Each week we share stories, advice and insights from those closest to care in Vermont and northern New York while exploring the local and national issues shaping health care. Catch Living Healthy Together live airing on Radio Vermont's WDEV Fridays at 1 pm.
