Next time you are reviewing the chart for your patient, take a look at the medication administration record. Every entry represents a decision – a decision to alter the physiology…

Adjustments to sweep gas flow are probably the most common adjustments that you will make in the course of an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) run. While it is entirely feasible…

By this point you have probably developed a healthy skepticism for the ventilator. While remaining an undeniable cornerstone in the support of critically ill patients, we have gone into the…

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…

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 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 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 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…

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…