ECMO

You can check the literature, but the success rates for Adult ECMO is still about 55%. Still, with this 50% success we DO see pts. go home. We get a lot of Legionelle and pneumonia, and we had a spate of adult chicken pox (DEADLY!) a few years back. And many of these people got better. If your odds or ARDS witha 70 - 90% mortality, or ECMO and ARDS with a 50% potential of survival, what would you choose? I'd try ECMO.

does anyone know where to find some good literature on management of adults on extrecorporeal life support?? We do a few cases of CPS and all we have are handed down written notes from a lecture one of our cardiologists did 6 years ago. Any help would be appreciated. Carrie

Look up Bartlett R, in the literature and you should see several articles from recent to the past. He is the doc at Michigan who 'invented' ECMO. Good luck!

Ask your hospital's perfusion dept about ECMO. After all, it is cardiopulmonary bypass, just moved into the ICU.

Our facility just had a success story. 29y F walked into the ED with plueritic CP and then collapsed. They placed her on ECMO for two weeks until a heart and double lung transplant was performed. She is doing fantastic and her docs still don't know exactly what happened to her to cause her illnessand resultant organ failure. Even though we do many, many, many VADs and transplants, ECMO is still a rarity. It was very exciting to see her do well.