The Outcome of Extracorporeal Life Support After General Thoracic Surgery: Timing of Application

Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) is widely used in refractory cardiac or pulmonary failure. Because complications of general thoracic surgery frequently involve the heart or lungs, ECLS can be a useful option. Therefore, we retrospectively reviewed our experience with ECLS after general thoracic surgery.

There were 17,185 adult general thoracic surgery procedures between 2005 and 2013 at our institution, including resection of the lung (n = 10,434; 60.7%), esophagus (n = 1,847; 0.7%), and other procedures (n = 4,904; 28.5%). Twenty-nine patients (0.2%) were supported by ECLS postoperatively.

The median age was 64 years (range, 24 to 81). Primary operations were lobectomy (n = 13; 44.8%), pneumonectomy (n = 11; 37.9%), and bilobectomy (n = 5; 17.2%). The initial mode of ECLS was venovenous in 20 patients (69.0%) and venoarterial in 9 patients (31.0%). There were 10 patients (34.5%) who survived to decannulation and 7 patients (24.1%) who survived to discharge. Over the same period, the survival to decannulation rate and survival to discharge rate were 49.5% and 35.0%, respectively, among all ECLS patients (n = 759) at our institution. The hospital mortality of patients with surgery to ECLS time of longer than 2 days was 90.9%. Multivariate analysis revealed that a longer surgery to ECLS time was a risk factor for hospital mortality (odds ratio 1.720, 95% confidence interval: 1.039 to 2.849, p = 0.035).

ECLS after general thoracic surgery can be a viable rescue therapy option. Late presentation of complications or ECLS for late complications of general thoracic surgery may be predictors of death.