WE'RE SAVING LIVES ... IT'S OMAZING

When Omaze founder Matt Pohlson flatlined for four-and-a-half minutes after suffering a cardiac arrest, a pioneering life-support machine kept him alive. Seven years later, he's giving back by donating the UK's first mobile ECMO to London's Air Ambulance

- By Richard Ashmore

IMAGINE coming back from the brink, euphoria flooding your body, moments after you felt your life ebb away — what would you say? “Guys, I just want to tell you, I love all of you, who thought about me and who I heard care about me, I love you, with my whole heart and with that whole heart.”

These were the jubilant words uttered by Omaze founder Matt Pohlson, who jokes he was “very high” and speaking from a California hospital bed having been brought back to life after dying for four-and-a-half minutes in 2018.

When Matt thanks the second heart, he is talking about an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine a last-chance lifesaving device that can, for a limited time, take over the function of the heart and lungs for a critically ill patient.

The first mobile ECMO in the world saved Matt’s life in 2018 and in an incredible full circle moment, his company, and the charity of the great British public, have now helped bring the first-ever mobile ECMO to the streets of London.

As Matt plays the very moving video of the moment he was brought back to life, he is standing in the ready room with the brave doctors and crew of the London’s Air Ambulance Charity (LAAC) - which has just acquired two new state-of-the-art helicopters, thanks to £4,000,000 donated by Omaze. The brand-new red flying machines are based at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel.

Gathered around Matt as he shows his astonishing home video are clinical lead Dr Anna Dobbie, and UK ECMO pioneer Dr Mamoun Abu-Habsa, as well as Peter Driver, the helicopter pilot who is blessed with a calm tone worthy of the best commercial airline captain.

It’s the first time the team have heard the remarkable personal connection Matt has to their lifesaving front line work.

Dr Abu-Habsa has brought out the ECMO used by the LAAC to show Matt, which looks like an unassuming see-through incubator-like device connected to a series of tubes.