Compassionate Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Discontinuation: A Narrative Review and Practical Process Model for...

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) provides temporary respiratory or circulatory support when conventional therapies fail. Some patients do not recover and are not candidates for transplant or durable mechanical support. In these cases, continuing ECMO may no longer align with the patient's goals. Compassionate ECMO discontinuation (CED) is the planned withdrawal of extracorporeal support with death anticipated. The term "compassionate" refers to the goal of minimizing suffering in the end-of-life process. This review proposes a reliability-oriented framework to standardize CED and reduce preventable distress for patients, families, and clinicians.

We conducted a targeted narrative review of ethical analyses, consensus guidance, and empirical literature on planned ECMO withdrawal. The results of the narrative review were combined with our existing practical process for CED into this proposed reliability-oriented framework as a guide for clinicians. Recommendations were organized into a four-phase process model that emphasizes operational implementation, anticipatory guidance, and quality improvement. We included modality-specific considerations for veno-arterial (VA), veno-venous (VV) ECMO, and extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR).

The framework includes four phases. Phase I, Anticipation and Alignment, emphasizes structured shared decision-making, early expectation setting, time-limited trials, palliative care integration, and predefined pathways for managing disagreement. Phase II, Preparation, includes interdisciplinary role assignment, a pre-withdrawal time out, family coaching on expected physiological changes, and preemptive comfort medications that account for ECMO-altered pharmacokinetics. Phase III, Implementation, prioritizes comfort first, pacing with explicit pause points, environmental controls to reduce alarms and visual distress, and modality-tailored sequencing. Phase VI, Aftercare and Learning Capture, includes bereavement support, standardized documentation, structured team debriefing, and recommended process measures to guide improvement.

Viewing CED as a low-frequency, high-stakes clinical process supported by scripts, checklists, and iterative feedback can improve goal-concordant end-of-life (EOL) care, reduce suffering and family trauma, support clinicians, and strengthen ECMO program learning systems.