Dave Scott thought he just had a lingering cold when tightness crept into his chest. By the time the pain turned severe enough for his wife to call 911, the 68-year-old Louisville man was in cardiac arrest. Now, he has reunited with the medical team that saved his life and is helping fund new life-support equipment so other patients in Metro Louisville get the same chance he did.
Scott survived a near-fatal cardiac arrest and cardiogenic shock at Norton Audubon Hospital after interventional cardiologist Dr. Mohammad F. Mathbout placed him on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, a machine that temporarily takes over the work of the heart and lungs, according to Norton Healthcare. As WDRB reports, Scott has since reunited with his care team and helped fund the ECMO training technology that will now be used to prepare the next generation of caregivers.
In gratitude for surviving, Scott and his family made a charitable gift to fund new ECMO transport capabilities and advanced life-support simulation technology, according to Norton Healthcare. The gift was designed specifically to help stabilize and transport critically ill patients who are unable to travel safely to a hospital equipped for ECMO care, the health system says.
Why the Gift Targets a Narrow but Critical Gap
ECMO is only useful if patients can reach a hospital capable of running it, and Scott's donation is meant to close that gap for people who crash somewhere other than a fully equipped facility. The technology matters because the stakes are steep: out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival to hospital discharge in the United States remained low at 10.5% in 2025 for cases treated by emergency medical services, according to Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival data released by the American Red Cross. Roughly 84% of adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrests stem from underlying heart conditions, the Red Cross notes.
A study published in Circulation in September 2025 examined the use of venoarterial ECMO during refractory out-of-hospital cardiac arrest when early reperfusion was achieved. That research helps explain why hospitals like Norton Audubon are investing in both the machines themselves and the training required to run them under pressure.
According to a study of Minnesota's mobile extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation program hosted by PubMed Central, the program achieved 100% successful cannulation and 43% functionally favorable outcomes. A review hosted by PubMed Central notes that a landmark study reported 34.1% overall survival to hospital discharge among 135 patients receiving extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or 30.3% when limited to patients with favorable cerebral-performance scores.
A Decade of Building Adult ECMO Capacity in Louisville
Norton Healthcare launched its dedicated adult ECMO program in 2016 at Norton Hospital and Norton Audubon Hospital, expanding adult life support into its own specialized service line after initially sharing resources with pediatric programs. The program saw its highest utilization levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the health system. That growth culminated this year when Norton Heart & Vascular Institute earned a 2026 Gold Center of Excellence designation from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization for its adult ECMO program.
The timing of Scott's donation lines up with new industry-wide expectations. The Extracorporeal Life Support Organization released updated global practice standards in June mandating continuous simulation-based training for ECMO clinicians, aimed at keeping them proficient in handling high-risk cannulation and equipment emergencies that can decompensate quickly. ECMO simulation can pair high-fidelity mannequins with ECMO circuits to help clinical teams practice emergency scenarios.
A Statewide Problem With Local Stakes
The urgency behind funding like Scott's is rooted in blunt numbers. Kentucky recorded an age-adjusted heart disease mortality rate of 196.9 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2024, representing 11,292 total cardiovascular deaths statewide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which lists heart disease as the commonwealth's single leading cause of death. Jefferson County health equity data shows higher heart-disease death rates in western and northwestern parts of the county and discusses housing and racial inequities, according to Louisville Health Equity data.
For Scott, the numbers are secondary to the reunion. His donation ties his own survival directly to the training tools that will shape how the next patient in cardiogenic shock is treated at Norton Audubon, turning a personal brush with death into equipment and simulation drills that could give future Louisville patients the same outcome he got.
