Hybrid respiratory support system with extracorporeal placental oxygenation

The authors developed a novel hybrid system for long-term respiratory support with extracorporeal placental oxygenation. In this system, the patient's blood is oxygenated with O2 saturated artificial blood across the villous membrane during passage through the fetal circuit of the placenta, which is placed in a specially constructed artificial uterus. Human term placentas were obtained immediately after vaginal delivery and used for the experiments. The gas transfer performance of the current apparatus was 60 ml/min for O2 and 40 ml/min for CO2 at a blood flow rate of 1.0 L/min. From these results (and the assured blood compatibility of the placenta), the authors conclude that this system will become one of the most promising modalities for prolonged extracorporeal oxygenation.