Venovenous Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation With Prophylactic Subcutaneous Anticoagulation Only: An Observational...

Extracorporeal lung support and therapeutic anticoagulation are dogmatically linked for most clinicians in fear of clotting of the extracorporeal circuit. In the last decade, however, we have learned that bleeding complications in the course of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) therapy are common and not occasionally limiting or fatal. Even though international guidelines lowered the PTT-target values, ECMO therapy without anticoagulation has only been reported sporadically in case reports heretofore. This monocentric, observational study was designed to evaluate a protocol for venovenous ECMO therapy without additional anticoagulation. Patients without former thrombotic events solely received thrombosis prophylaxis with 40 mg subcutaneous enoxaparin per day like every critical care patient. After approval by the local ethics committee (Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg ethics committee, EK 513/14) all consecutive patients treated with venovenous ECMO therapy since introduction of the protocol have been identified. Digital charts of the patients have been evaluated with special regard to bleeding and thrombotic or embolic events or breakdown of the extracorporeal circuit. Sixty-one patients received venovenous ECMO therapy with prophylactic subcutaneous enoxaparin only. Median duration of ECMO therapy was 7 days (2-32). Overall 560 ECMO days have been observed. No system exchange because of thrombotic occlusion was necessary within the permitted 5 days run time of the centrifugal pump. Overall we identified thrombotic complications in four patients. In three of them centrifugal pump after a runtime of more than 5 days unexpectedly stopped completely because of thrombotic occlusion. In all cases pump exchange was performed promptly and patients did not incur hypoxic deficit. One other patient received substitution of blood products and coagulation factor concentrates because of severe bleeding and sustained myocardial infarction the day after. Only 18% of patients presented with essential clinical bleeding after 7 days of therapy. No fatal bleeding event and no intracranial hemorrhage was observed. Patients required only a third of blood product transfusion compared to published data. Venovenous ECMO therapy with prophylactic anticoagulation only was feasible in this study. It was not associated with an increased rate of system exchanges compared to regimes with therapeutic anticoagulation in registry data. It provides the potential to relevantly decrease the incidence of severe bleeding events and blood transfusion requirements. The apodictic adherence to anticoagulation in therapeutic dosage should be critically scrutinized in every patient.