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Updated: Jul 10, 2025
Point-of-Care Ultrasound for Peripheral Veno-Arterial Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Without Left Ventricular Venting
Published on: January 17, 2025
Implementing an Adult Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Program During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Brandy Pitts1, Midge Vaughan, Jamie Kay Roney
1Brandy Pitts is an RN and Midge Vaughan is ECMO program coordinator at Providence Covenant Children's Hospital, Lubbock, TX. Jamie Kay Roney was Texas regional research coordinator at Providence Covenant Health, Lubbock, TX, during implementation of the adult ECMO program and is currently director of nursing professional development at the Texas Nurses Association, Austin. Contact author: Jamie Kay Roney, armygirlrn@aol.com. The authors have disclosed no potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.
Background:
In response to the needs of patients infected with COVID-19, an interdisciplinary team was assembled to implement an adult extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) program in the surgical ICU of a West Texas tertiary care hospital. Use of Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO) guidelines was essential to the development of this effort.
Aim:
The aim of this project was to develop, implement, and evaluate an adult ECMO program.
Methods:
A logic model was used in designing and evaluating the adult ECMO program. A 35-hour ECMO specialist training course was developed, and training began in August 2020, a month before implementation of the project began. Patient outcomes were measured between September 2020 and December 2021. Descriptive statistics were used to measure the clinical outcomes of interest.
Results:
Seventeen newly trained ECMO specialists included experienced critical care nurses and respiratory therapists. Protocols were developed for the initiation of ECMO, and tracked patient outcomes included survival off ECMO, survival to discharge, major and minor complications, and length of stay. Nine patients had COVID-19 and demonstrated an 11.11% mortality rate after adult ECMO program implementation.
Conclusions:
Use of the ELSO professional guidelines to design and develop this project led to the achievement of a sustainable ECMO program. Hospital leaders can now implement adult ECMO programs amid other demands for resources that may be created by future pandemics.
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