Extracorporeal life support (ECLS), also known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or ECMO, is one of the most advanced forms of life support available to patients experiencing acute failure of the cardiac and respiratory systems, including critical cases of COVID-19. UC Davis Medical Center has received the Platinum Level ELSO Award for Excellence in Life Support from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO) for its Extracorporeal Life Support Program. The program provides lifesaving support for failing organ systems in infants, children and adults.
For more information, visit https://health.ucdavis.edu/newsroom/news/headlines/uc-davis-medical-center-receives-platinum-level-excellence-in-life-support-award/2021/08
UC Davis Children's Hospital: https://health.ucdavis.edu/children/
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ECMO stands for extra corporeal, which means you're taking the blood out of the body membrane oxygenation, which means the nearer than oxygenating that blood. It allows us to kind of provide an artificial pump of the heart and artificial oxygenation of the lung. So anytime the heart and our lungs are working too hard and we need to provide them time to rest and recover. We can use ECMO to do that like a neonatal having heart surgery or pediatric patient with um Asma or an adult coming out of heart surgery or now, most recently adults with covid. So basically we put large tubing into the two areas of the heart, One area of the heart. We pull the blood out of it runs through this pump, pushes it through this oxygenate er which puts oxygen in the blood takes out the carbon dioxide and then we return it back into the heart. So these canyons are directly in your heart is the most serious form of life support that we have. Um It can be very risky because you are taking the patient's blood out of their body and returning it to them. So there are risks involved with that. The mortality rate is about 50%. So the patients that go on ECMO have an 80% chance, 80 90% chance of dying Without it. They still only have a 50% chance of living with ECMO. So it is not fix everybody once a patient is on, they actually do need frequent blood product replacement. So it's not just about the machine and the nursing staff at the bedside, It's about the blood bank, it's about the pharmacists that have to make medications, especially for these patients. It's about the labs that have to be drawn for the monitoring. So it's not just this piece of equipment, it's all the things that go behind it to make it work coming back from temperature.
