Congratulations to Brenda Button on her award of a 2014 Churchill Fellowship

Congratulations to Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor Brenda Button on her award of a 2014 Churchill Fellowship. This is a wonderful honour and tribute to Brenda’s excellence as an exceptional, innovative and committed physiotherapist. Brenda’s project is to “Gain expertise in life supportive treatment for patients bridged to lung transplant on external mechanical oxygenation (ECMO)”. Brenda joins an elite Churchill Fellowship group from AIRmed as previous recipients include Associate Professors Anne Holland and Bronwyn Levvey.

More about ECMO and lung transplant

The physiotherapy on ECMO is chest physiotherapy to clear patients' lungs of thick infected sputum, which process assists in keeping them alive long enough to get new lungs. It also enables patients to exercise their lungs maximally while on ECMO so that the patients are as fit as possible after transplant. Being fit promotes a better outcome after transplant.. Being able to do exercise while on ECMO is full of challenges, as this life supportive treatment can be impaired by some movements and then not function well, which puts the patient at risk of not surviving to transplant, or having many complications such as clotting of blood vessels.