Lorraine’s legacy funds first metabolic monitor for the North West

Seriously ill patients who have been placed into an induced coma to help them recover in hospital will receive specialist care thanks to a new piece of equipment which is the first to be used across the North West.

Sometimes patients are placed into a coma to help their recovery, protecting the brain from further damage and allowing the body time to heal. While a patient is in a coma they need the right amount of calories to keep them healthy.

Thanks to hospital charity Blue Skies, the COSMED portable metabolic monitor, or calorimeter, is being used in Blackpool Teaching Hospitals’ intensive care department

Thought to be one of only ten in the country, the calorimeter provides accurate and personalised nutritional calculations so that each patient receives received exactly the right calories for them depending on their unique energy expenditure needs. These needs are dynamic and can change during the course of a patient’s stay.  Having either too many or too few calories is harmful so getting it right means a safer, shorter stay in the intensive care unit (ICU), less muscle loss and reduced time needing mechanical ventilation.

Advanced Critical Care Dietitician Rodney Hall, who championed the need for buying the device said:

“Both the quality and safety of care provided is fundamental to the recovery of patients and the efficiency of the intensive care unit.

“All patients with an ICU stay will lose some muscle strength and muscle mass. The amount lost will depend on how well nutrition has matched their needs. The less muscle lost will contribute to successful rehabilitation and a return to independence.”

The machine was purchased by Blue Skies with the help of a £16k fundraising campaign by Jim Egan, whose wife Lorraine was a patient at BTH.

Jim said: “The measure of Lorraine’s life was not its length but its depth. The fact that friends and family have raised so much in her memory just shows how deeply she affected us all. I wanted to do something to say thanks and leave a bit of a legacy”.