A recent article in The Fresno Bee highlights the success of an expanding ECMO program at Valley Children’s Hospital in Fresno, CA. Valley Children’s has been providing ECMO support for post-op cardiac surgery patients for some time, but have only expanded beyond that population recently.
The article quotes Valley Children’s ECMO Medical director,
“It requires a lot of expertise to do this right,” Kallas said.”
Valley Children’s has been working very diligently over the last several months to methodically plan for the success of an expanding ECMO program to care for pulmonary ECMO patients in addition to the post-op cardiac patients. The planning process involved looking to the ELSO guidelines to establish a solid foundation for the ECMO program structure as well as a solid plan for training new ECMO Specialists. The article says,
“It’s taken a team of people to build the ECMO program at Valley Children’s, said Dr. Harry Kallas, medical director of the ECMO program. The hospital has contracted with an outside company, ECMO Advantage, for consultation to help build the program and train staff, he said.”
We are very excited for the success Valley Children’s Hospital is having with their ECMO Program and especially excited for the high quality of care the patients they serve are now able to receive close to home.