Meet the ECMO Specialist: Q&A with Katy
Home base: Wisconsin ECMO background: Trained in a pediatric CVICU With our team since: Started PRN in June 2022, transitioned to full-time June 2023 Favorite cases: Complex congenital hearts ECMO is feast or famine, and that can make staffing enormously difficult. A program might have one ECMO patient in three months, then four in a […]
Does ECMO Have a Role in Severe Heat Stroke?
Most of the time, ECMO programs are focused on warming patients, not cooling them. The extracorporeal circuit pulls a large volume of blood through tubing exposed to ambient air, and without active warming it draws heat out of the patient as it runs. Plus, the patients themselves also tend to arrive cold, from shock, prolonged […]
Why ECMO Anticoagulation Monitoring Still Has No Easy Answer
Anticoagulant selection is only one part of ECMO anticoagulation management. The next question is how clinicians monitor whether that strategy is actually working. As we’ve established, with ECMO patients, bleeding and thrombosis are not opposite ends of a simple spectrum—they can coexist. A patient may be bleeding from cannulation sites while still developing circuit thrombus, or may have lab values that […]
Anticoagulation Options on ECMO
Recent pressures on heparin supply have prompted many ECMO programs to take a closer look at their anticoagulation protocols, but the conversation around alternatives is one worth having regardless of the current landscape. For experienced ECMO clinicians, the “right” anticoagulation approach is far from settled science. The decision requires balancing circuit integrity, bleeding risk, patient […]
A Landmark Case in ECMO-Supported Bridge-to-Transplant Care
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) has always been a therapy defined by its ability to buy time; time for a heart to recover, for lungs to heal, or for a transplant to become possible. But a recently published case report from Northwestern Medicine introduces a new way of buying time — one that has only been attempted a handful of times […]
Beyond VV and VA: Targeted Ventricular Support in ECMO
For many clinicians, ECMO begins and ends with two familiar configurations: veno-venous (VV) for respiratory failure and veno-arterial (VA) for cardiopulmonary collapse. In practice, however, not every patient fits cleanly into those categories. As ECMO programs have matured, cannulation strategies have evolved to address more specific hemodynamic problems—particularly isolated right or left ventricular failure, inadequate ventricular unloading, or mixed […]
5 Lessons from 50+ ECMO Programs: What We’re Bringing to Bridging Life 2026
Building an ECMO program looks different on paper than it does in practice. After years of supporting program launches across the country, we’ve learned that success often hinges on factors that aren’t always obvious at the outset. With the Bridging Life Critical Care Symposium coming up next week in Houston, we’ve been connecting with hospital […]
New Research Raises Questions About Transfusion Thresholds in VA-ECMO Patients
A recent study suggests liberal transfusion strategies may offer early survival benefits—but don’t change your practice just yet. If you manage VA-ECMO patients, you’re probably following a transfusion protocol: whether it’s your institution’s order set, your program’s algorithm, or your attending’s preference. The threshold might be 7 g/dL, 8 g/dL, 9 g/dL, or somewhere in […]
A New Window Into the Brain: Ultra-Low-Field MRI for ECMO Patients
Neurological complications remain one of the most devastating challenges in ECMO care. Despite advances in monitoring technology, detecting acute brain injuries early enough to intervene has remained frustratingly difficult. However, portable MRI technology is changing what’s possible at the bedside, offering ECMO patients access to imaging that was previously difficult or out of reach. The […]
How Respiratory Season Impacts ECMO Demand—And How to Prepare Your Program
Every fall, cardiovascular program leaders face the same challenge: respiratory season is coming, ECMO demand will surge, but the timing and volume remain impossible to predict. This year, with overlapping flu, RSV, and COVID-19 circulating simultaneously, the pressure on ECMO programs has intensified—and so has the strain on the teams that support them. For hospitals […]