ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation)
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When your heart or lungs struggle to do their jobs, sometimes traditional treatments can’t help. In these cases, a special machine can give you oxygen and deliver it around your body. This is called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).
If you need ECMO, you're in good hands here. UVA Health's adult ECMO team is the only one in Virginia named a Center of Excellence with platinum status from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization. And we've been named a Level 1 trauma center. It means that when you're life is on the line, you can count on us to give you the highest standards of care.
What is ECMO? How Does it Work?
The ECMO machine temporarily replaces the work of your heart and lungs. ECMO doesn’t actually treat or cure the causes of your heart or lung issues. But ECMO can support your body while your healthcare team works to manage and treat your condition.
How it Works
- We connect the machine to your blood system by putting tubes in a large artery and/or vein in your chest, leg, or neck.
- A pump is used to move the blood from your body and through the ECMO system.
- Your blood flows through the system’s artificial lung, which removes carbon dioxide and adds oxygen.
- The pump then returns your blood to your body.
If you need ECMO, you’ll be staying in our thoracic cardiovascular intensive care unit (ICU), with the machine at your bedside.
ECMO Explained
Dr Beller:
ECMO stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. This machine is a very powerful tool. It can support both the heart function and lung function by putting oxygen into the blood and pumping it to the body.
Kat Argon:
A patient could need ECMO for numerous reasons. So the first would be respiratory support such as COVID or the flu. ECMO in these situations can be used when the ventilator has kind of reached its max potential for supporting the patient and it's no longer working as well as it needs to. ECMO can then come in as a supporting role to help further support the lungs and buy the patient more time for recovery. It also can be used in a cardiac support setting, bypassing the heart, allowing the heart to rest, supporting the heart on its way to either recovery or maybe as a bridge to transplant. We look at every single patient as a case by case scenario and rely on physicians from the whole bandwidth of care teams to help us identify patients that could potentially be supported by ECMO.
Dr Beller:
Patients that are supported with ECMO go through a long journey, but ultimately when they come out on the other side and are able to make it out of the hospital and get patients through one of the most difficult times in their lives and get them back to their families and doing the things that they love doing.
Why Would I Need ECMO?
You may need an ECMO machine if your:
- Lungs can’t put enough oxygen into your blood
- Lungs can’t remove enough carbon dioxide from your blood
- Heart can’t pump enough blood around your body
You may need ECMO if you have one of these conditions:
- Heart:
- Heart attack
- Pulmonary embolism
- Myocarditis
- Cardiogenic shock
- Heart failure
- Lung:
- Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)
- Pneumonia
- Other reversible lung diseases
ECMO can also support you if you:
- Need a left ventricular assist device (LVAD)
- Are waiting for a heart or lung transplant
- In the lead up to or after surgery
- Have suffered trauma or severe sepsis
Refer a Patient
Contact us about transferring a patient needing ECMO to our ICU.