For all of us who have been doing ECMO for many years, the concept of walking and talking on ECMO can seem terrifying! But we are being presented with more and more examples of this being done. Obviously not every patient on ECMO should be walking and talking. But, there is certainly a subset of ECMO patients for whom these activities make a lot of sense and provide a lot of benefit. AND can be done safely with proper planning, training, and execution as a health care team.
There are several examples of ECMO patients walking. CNN recently posted a report of a patient at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City that’s pretty awesome. Check it out here
Kudos to the team at Mercy! And strong work Zei!