© Provided by WCVB Boston Dr. Justin Maykel, a surgeon at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, donates plasma after recovering from COVID-19.

Doctors at a Worcester hospital say they saved a coronavirus patient in the nick of time, thanks to an experimental treatment involving blood plasma.

The vital signs of the COVID-19 patient, who was on a ventilator at UMass Memorial Medical Center, were getting terribly worse last Saturday.

"He was essentially approaching near maximal settings for the ventilator to keep him alive," said Dr. Jonathan Gerber, of UMass Memorial.

The hospital had recently received its first batch of blood plasma from a recovered COVID-19 patient, and doctors immediately injected the plasma into a patient who was fighting for life. The doctors were amazed when they saw the patient's condition improve within just a few hours.

"Just ecstatic that it worked, pleasantly surprised," Gerber said. "It worked better than I expected. We hoped for the best, and, honestly, that was probably the best we could've hoped for."

First used during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, plasma therapy uses the natural antibodies that a person's immune system develops to surround and kill a virus.

Those antibodies can then be extracted and shared with another patient to boost their immunity.

Dr. Justin Maykel, a surgeon at UMass Memorial, donated his plasma after he recovered from a COVID-19 infection he developed early last month.

"I think it probably is our best hope," Maykel said. "When I signed up, I never thought I'd be donating my plasma. I thought I'd be using my surgical skills to help people, but it's really not a surgeon or a doctor thing. It's really just about being another member of our community."

UMass Memorial doctors now need more recovered COVID-19 patients to step forward and donate their plasma. Without new plasma donations, they might soon have to decide which patients get the life-saving treatment, and which ones do not.

"Right now, we're picking the sickest patients to try to pull them back from the brink where there's the most urgency," Gerber said.

Recovered COVID-19 patients can donate plasma multiple times, but they do have to wait several weeks between each donation.

Those interested in donating plasma can contact their local hospital or the Red Cross for more information.

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READ THE FULL STORY:Plasma therapy saves life of coronavirus patient at local hospital, doctors say

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