EMOttawa - Emergency Medicine Ottawa
EMOttawa - July 15, 2016 - By Noam Katz
"Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) remains a major cause of mortality for which we rely on advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) guidelines to manage within the ED. However, when these guidelines fail, we are left with almost no additional options as lifesaving measures. Worldwide there has been exponential growth in the use of veno-arterial extracorporeal membranous oxygenation (VA ECMO) – a bedside heart-lung bypass modality – in order to take control of the physiology of patients in cardiac arrest in order to perform additional life-saving interventions.
I had the opportunity to attend a conference – Reanimate 2016 – in order to learn more about this modality, how it is being applied in the ED for cardiac arrest patients and how Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego, CA, has improved their cardiac arrest survival rates regardless of the use of ECMO..:"