Anesthesia Key

Imagine that you are initiating a patient on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). The cannulas are in excellent position and the circuit is connected and ready to go. You release the…

We will now continue our exploration of VA ECMO physiology by considering the physiology of centrally cannulated VA ECMO. The proportion of central cannulation is largely facility dependent. While some…

Hopefully by this point, you are starting to develop a much better sense of the principles at play when someone is on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). We started with the…

Let’s now continue our exploration of the fundamentals of extracorporeal membrane ­oxygenation (ECMO) support by discussing cannulation configurations. To remind ourselves, the basic ­function of the ECMO circuit is to…

There is nothing intuitive about retrograde flow. You are pumping blood in one direction into the arterial system, which is the opposite direction that blood is supposed to flow. At…

We are now going to continue our journey by exploring the physiology of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support. You may find the chapters to follow to be the cornerstone of…

Let’s now move our discussion to the physiology of veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA ECMO). As you will come to appreciate, VA ECMO is a very different type of support…

Now that we have a little more foundation, let’s return to our circuit, and dive a little deeper into the circuit components that you may come across and how you…

Let’s now turn our attention to the membrane itself. We will explore the function of the membrane oxygenator, its limits, and how we can appraise and assess this function at…

Now we are at the point where we can start to apply our discussion of physiology to specific extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) configurations. As you will see, even though they…