HEMS Debrief - Retrieval and Pre-Hospital Medicine #3. ECMO...in trauma???

G'day and welcome back to the podcast.

ECMO....in trauma? Today, we are talking about a more general emergency medicine / intensive care medicine topic, that of advanced trauma care. It is fair to raise an eyebrow at 'advanced trauma care' and 'ECMO' in the same sentence - these patients are anatomically disrupted, prone to bleeding and suffering huge multi-system injuries. So placing them onto a heparinised ECMO circuit seems counterintuitive. 

But, Chris Bishop and the team from London offer a different perspective. 

Chris is a Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the Centre for Trauma Sciences at Queen Mary University of London, UK. His PhD research focuses on the potential utility of veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO) to treat cardiac dysfunction associated with major trauma haemorrhage. Indeed, as we have discussed elsewhere in the podcast, these patients often have refractory cardiogenic shock secondary to an unfavourable metabolic storm following massive acute trauma - and it is partly this which ECMO may help bridge. 

Too, we discuss with Chris the benefit of ECMO as part of a neuro-protection package of care in patients with severe lung injury who are challenging to ventilate. 

This is real cutting edge medicine, and we are delighted to share with you our chat with Chris. 

Speak to you soon.