ECMO to help ana patients when lungs and heart shut down

[luci]

The recent post about the Omaha 7 year old was interesting for me. And though I'm glad to hear the outcome was good the way they effected that success was even better news.

The news report said they used ECMO (a medical machine) to breathe and pump oxygen through the child's body when heart and lungs were shutting down.  Eight years ago I talked to a doctor friend about anaphylaxis and how people died because their heart and lung shut down.  I told her I thought it would be great if they could make a machine to oxygenate the blood and put it back into the body sort of like a dialysis machine but adding O2 and taking out CO2 while the blood was pumped through the machine.  So my friend said they had a machine that could do that and was used during surgeries (it was called ECMO). I said great, they could use that to save anaphylaxis patients,  but she said that she had never heard of using ECMO in those cases, just with surgeries.  I'm so glad they apparently are using it now.

Does anyone know if this is a common protocol now (for ana cases where the heart and lung are shutting down)?

[Arkadia]

ECMO is to heart and lung what CCVHD is to kidney.   Both involve exceptionallt gravely ill individuals and hospitalization/critical care.

[Arkadia]

And ive never seen it without intubation as an adjunct.

[CMdeux]

Right-- and even more rare in pediatric treatment than in adults, at least outside of major pediatric transplant centers.

Being in anaphylaxis at a place that can resort to ECMO is purely luck.  Good luck, of course, if you need it-- but it's probably not the reality for 99% of people vulnerable to anaphylaxis.  It wouldn't be an option in time for my DD, for example-- though we do live within an hour of a pediatric transplant center that has one.  Trouble is that she'd already be dead by then. 

[hedgehog]

First time I heard of ECMO was over 16 years ago.  My co-worker's grandbaby was due around the same time I was due to have DD.  But her grandchild was born preemie, and was missing one lung entirely and the other was not large or developed enough.  I know they had her on an ECMO machine (the baby did not survive more than a few weeks, though  ).