Please explain ECMO

[qcumba]

HI I'm A nursing student in South Africa and we do not commonly use ECMO, Actually never in my hospital. I would like to know what ECMO is, what is it used for? how does it work?

Thank you.

[chare]

e medicine has an excellent article discussing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ecmo).

if you have never been to the e medicine site, it does require a no charge registration.

[qcumba]

Thank you very much that was very helpful, I appreciate the help:bow:.So from what I understand from the article it is basically last resort or am I wrong?? i work in a small hospital only 300 odd beds. Our NICU has an official capacity of 5 patients but at times it can be up to 8, so it is very small, which is most likely why we dont see ECMO. In addition to that we dont have a paediatric exclusive ICU ours is mixed so our ICU nurses have to b able to deal with both from baby's a couple of weeks old - as our NICU only caters for prems or newborns from labour ward or nursery with problems-to geriatrics, with a Paeds High care/ step down unit which is only 2 beds and is in the Paeds unit itself. so in other words it is interesting for me to see how things are done on the other side of the world,

Thank You:)