Everything ECMO
In specialist centres, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a now a mainstay of the management of cardio/respiratory failure refractory to other measures. However, much of the clinical information required to care for ECMO patients at the bedside remains inaccessible to learners. To address this, the creation of a free-to-access educational ECMO blog post is now a requirement for completion of the Alfred ICU ECMO Accreditation Certificate.
“Everything ECMO” blog posts are created by ICU Senior Registrars, Fellows, and Consultants and are peer-reviewed by one or more ECMO specialists from the Alfred ICU.
This has culminated in a high quality, peer-reviewed collection of resources for learning ECMO using a fictionalized case-based Q&A format. Indeed, the blog that curates the series, INTENSIVE, was recently assessed as among the “top ten” critical care educational websites in the world using the Critical Care Medical Education Website Quality Evaluation Tool (CCMEWQET) (Wolbrink et al, 2018).
Everything ECMO Posts
- 001 — Persistent hypoxaemia on VV ECMO
- 002 — VV ECMO ventilation and weaning
- 003 — An ECMO earthquake? (access insufficiency)
- 004 — Why is the bag turning red? (haemolysis)
- 005 — Cardiac arrest on VV ECMO
- 006 — Access insufficiency is just the beginning… (complications of VV ECMO and necrotizing pneumonia)
- 007 — What is different about hypoxia on VA ECMO? (differential hypoxia aka Harlequin Syndrome)
- 008 — Weaning from VA ECMO
- 009 — Differential hypoxia in reverse?! (pseudo-differential hypoxia and reverse differential hypoxia)
- 010 — Keep calm and cannulate! (ECMO cannulation)
- 011 — Go with the flow (High-flow VV ECMO configuration)
- 012 — Turn and face the circuit… ch-ch-change it! (ECMO circuit change)
- 013 — Pump it! (Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) concepts)
- 014 — Not just little adults… ECMO and paediatric lung transplantation
- 015 — Cardiac arrest on ECMO… Does it still count? (ECMO cardiac arrest)
- 016 — Holy HITTS! (Oxygenator thrombosis, HITTS)
- 017 — ECMO Circuit Rupture!
- 018 — ECMO Cannula Rupture!
- 019 — Bad bubbles and VV-ECMO (Air embolus on VV ECMO)
- 020 — “Pink fluid coming up the tube”.. ECMO, LV distention, and more!
For an updated list, and numerous other ECMO resources, visit the ECMO page on INTENSIVE.
References and Links
LITFL
- CCC – Everything ECMO
- CCC – ECMO troubleshooting
- CCC – Pharmacokinetics and ECMO
- CCC – Own the ECMO (presentation by Hergen Buescher, 2011)
Journals
- Wolbrink TA, Rubin L, Burns JP, Markovitz B. The Top Ten Websites in Critical Care Medicine Education Today. J Intensive Care Med. 2018;:885066618759287. [PMID 29519206]
Disclaimer: I am an intensivist and ECMO specialist at the Alfred ICU, and editor and co-creator of INTENSIVE and the “Everything ECMO” series.
Critical Care
Compendium
Chris is an Intensivist and ECMO specialist at the Alfred ICU in Melbourne. He is also a Clinical Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash University. He is a co-founder of the Australia and New Zealand Clinician Educator Network (ANZCEN) and is the Lead for the ANZCEN Clinician Educator Incubator programme. He is on the Board of Directors for the Intensive Care Foundation and is a First Part Examiner for the College of Intensive Care Medicine. He is an internationally recognised Clinician Educator with a passion for helping clinicians learn and for improving the clinical performance of individuals and collectives.
After finishing his medical degree at the University of Auckland, he continued post-graduate training in New Zealand as well as Australia’s Northern Territory, Perth and Melbourne. He has completed fellowship training in both intensive care medicine and emergency medicine, as well as post-graduate training in biochemistry, clinical toxicology, clinical epidemiology, and health professional education.
He is actively involved in in using translational simulation to improve patient care and the design of processes and systems at Alfred Health. He coordinates the Alfred ICU’s education and simulation programmes and runs the unit’s education website, INTENSIVE. He created the ‘Critically Ill Airway’ course and teaches on numerous courses around the world. He is one of the founders of the FOAM movement (Free Open-Access Medical education) and is co-creator of litfl.com, the RAGE podcast, the Resuscitology course, and the SMACC conference.
His one great achievement is being the father of three amazing children.
On Twitter, he is @precordialthump.
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