Cardiopulmonary Arrest and Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation: Case Report and Review

National trends suggest that less than one in four patients experiencing in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) in the United States survive to discharge. This is especially relevant as the rates of IHCA are expected to rise in the years to come. Only a modest upward trend in survival to discharge among patients with IHCA over the past decade warrants evaluation of novel ideas to improve outcomes postcardiopulmonary resuscitation. One such idea is that the use of veno-arterial-extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO) to augment standard advanced cardiac life support algorithm in patients with an identifiable and reversible cause of cardiac arrest would improve survival to discharge. Here, we present the case of a patient with refractory ventricular fibrillation arrest who was transitioned to VA-ECMO immediately following cardiac catheterization for an IHCA.