An Introduction To Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO)

Yesterday, while shopping I met a respiratory therapist and ECMO perfusionist who practices at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. We talked briefly about his work in these two fields of critical care and he agreed to be interviewed for an upcoming podcast on Morning Medicine (podcast series coming soon).

With this upcoming podcast episode in mind, I went ahead and reviewed some resources on ECMO.

Episode 33: ECMO with Dr. Rosanne Sheinberg
FEBRUARY 6, 2017 BY ACCRAC

In this episode, episode 33, I welcome cardiac anesthesiologist Dr. Rosanne (Rosie) Sheinberg to the show to discuss ECMO. We go through a comprehensive overview of what ECMO is, how it is used, how it is managed, the complications that can be seen and how to manage them and how to wean it off.

This is the first in a series of ECMO podcast from the LearnECMO team – starting with the physiology of ECMO gas exchange.

Haemodynamics literally means blood movement and thus is the physical study of flowing blood and the structures through which it flows. In bedside vernacular we tend to use haemodynamics to refer to accessible surrogate measurements of cardiovascular performance, such as vascular and chamber pressures or quantifications of macrocirculatory blood flow.

To understand the haemodynamic effects of ECMO we will consider the effects of the in-parallel VA circuit and the in-series VV circuit separately. The effect on cardiac performance can be best approached and compartmentalised by examining the impact of ECMO on each of the determinants of stroke volume: preload, afterload and contractility.

Resources:

 

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