[Clinical experience of extracorporeal life support with the use of centrifugal pump ECMO]

Many reports have documented the good results with the use of extracorporeal life support in severe respiratory and circulatory failure. In our institution, we have used the centrifugal pump (Bioconsol 540: Biomedicus Co. Ltd.) ECMO for extracorporeal life support, and obtained good results in three cases. We used V-V bypass ECMO in one case (idiopathic interstitial pneumonia) and V-A by-pass ECMO in other two cases (ARDS and meconium aspiration syndrome). Duration of total bypass in three cases were 34, 51 and 140 hours, respectively. Recent reports on the use of centrifugal pump have indicated that it can bring excellent results of circulatory assist for cardiogenic shock. Compared to the roller pump method, the use of centrifugal pump ECMO was very simple, and could serve as an effective method for providing improvement in a relatively short period.