Articles & News

Subscribe to our blog to get the latest in ECMO articles and news.

Email Address

New 2015 ECPR Recommendations

New 2015 ECPR recommendations can be found buried in the 2015 American Heart Association guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The recommendations are broken down into 3 primary age groups; Neonatal, Pediatric, Adult. Then further distinguished by In Hospital Cardiac Arrest (IHCA) and Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA). Overall general recommendations still state that there is insufficient evidence to […]

Read More

Prone Positioning on ECMO

The recommendation of prone positioning on ECMO may put fear into the heart of the caregiver.  Thoughts of  inadvertent decannulation, extubation, excessive bleeding, kinked ECMO tubing… A recent article in RESPIRATORY CARE provided a review of 7 prospective studies or case reports that revealed very few complications related to prone positioning on ECMO.  There were […]

Read More

Successful Support of Adult Myocarditis Using VA ECMO

A recent article in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery highlights successful support of Adult Myocarditis using VA ECMO.  Use of Adult ECMO has significantly increased over the last few years.  The benefits of using ECMO in various adult populations are still being proven. This article provides a nice overview of successful use for this special […]

Read More

Blood Conservation Practices Impact ECMO

Should new blood conservation practices impact ECMO management?  Over the last few years we have seen multiple benefits from blood conservation measures across the OR and ICU environments.  But should we employ these measures to ECMO management? For many years, and still today, many ECMO order sets will direct caregivers to treat a HCT of […]

Read More

Apnea Test on ECMO

A group in Poland has published a nice summary regarding how to perform an apnea test on ECMO. This discussion has also come up on eclsnet over the years. In order to perform a valid apnea test it is generally accepted that the patient’s CO2 must rise above 60 mm Hg (or increase by 20 mmHg above […]

Read More

ECMO for Endocrine Emergencies?

How many of you think ECMO for Endocrine Emergencies?  Have a patient with thyroid storm…think ECMO? Diabetic ketoacidosis…think ECMO?? Pheochromocytoma crisis…ECMO??? A recent report from  Chao, A. et al. Highlighting indication of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in endocrine emergencies. Sci. Rep. 5, 13361; doi: 10.1038/srep13361 (2015). discusses several cases of endocrine emergencies that have been successfully […]

Read More

Ambulatory ECMO Saves Money

Can Ambulatory ECMO save your program money? A recent article in Respiratory Care indicates Ambulatory ECMO saves money.  According to the abstract, a single center produced a 73% reduction in post lung transplant ICU cost and a 22% reduction in overall hospital cost.   Walking ECMO patients is becoming more and more popular as cost savings and […]

Read More

ECMO Transport

The University of Alabama completed their first ECMO transport in February, 2015. Check out the story at UAB News.

Read More

ECPR Improves Patient Survival

A recent article in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery states that ECPR improves patient survival from <20% to 30% with 100% full neurological recovery. In addition, ECPR made successful organ donation possible for some of the patients that did not survive. ECPR is the process of initiating ECMO for the purpose of or […]

Read More