It was early February when Nathaniel Williams was driving to work in New Mexico a few miles from El Paso. The 26-year-old Dallas native was hit head-on by a semi-truck, resulting in life-threatening injuries that required him to be airlifted to University Medical Center of El Paso, the region’s only Level 1 Trauma Center.
As he underwent multiple surgeries at UMC, Williams’ family hastily traveled from Dallas. It was during one of those surgeries that Williams began having trouble breathing, which resulted in immediate intubation. Although a temporary solution, intubation was not enough for Williams, whose oxygen level began to decline.
In that moment, UMC’s team of specialists made the decision to use UMC’s newly launched extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine on Williams, saving his life…