EDECMO Podcast

With the growing prevalence of ECPR, it is now more important than ever for all individuals in the medical community to understand what ECMO is, not just those providers who are directly involved with its use. In this new podcast series, Zack Shinar and Jon Marinaro help Nathaniel Dennis-Benford, a first-year medical student, explore what a medical student should know about ECMO and ECPR. In this first episode of the series, we start from the basics: what is "cardiac arrest", how is it traditionally managed, and finally what even is ECMO?

If you are running or starting a US ECMO program, this episode is a must listen.  John Mehall from Innovative ECMO Concepts goes through the financial aspects of ECMO care.  He covers everything from hospital charges to physician reimbursement to areas where hospitals commonly fail.  We all know that you cannot have a successful ECMO program unless you have sufficient funding to keep it going.  Jon Marinaro, Zack Shinar, and an entire audience of Reanimate 9 attendees join the episode to ask questions and give their own insight. Web Pricer (cms.gov) - your hospital weight.  Times it by DRG to get your hospital ECMO compensation.

This month Zack gives some pearls from his travels to Prague for Jan Behlolavek's ECPR school, Poland to meet with Marek Dabrowski, and ELSO with the entire crew.  Zack also interviews Saul Levine for the first of what may be a recurring conversation about the San Diego Resuscitation Consortium.  His efforts along with Kristi Koenig, Shawn Evans, Todd Baumbacher, and many others have paved the way for an OHCA ECPR protocol that may change more than just San Diego cardiac care.  Listen to Saul explain how the first 3 months of this process has expanded the minds of what cardiac arrest care can look like.

This episode is a follow up to last month's episode with Nichole Bosson.  Zack interviews Vadim Gudzenko about the in-patient aspects and critical care doctor perspective on the Los Angeles OHCA ECPR program.  A few take homes are that EMS is critical to any OHCA ECPR program.  Nurses need support for these intense patients with high mortality.  And emergency physicians need to buy in to the idea of ECMO for cardiac arrest to make a successful program.

One of the biggest questions in ECPR right now is how do we organize our system to provide ECPR in an effective and streamlined approach?  Nichole Bosson and her army of ECPR enthusiasts have successfully implemented a multi-hospital ECPR receiving center program in Los Angeles.  In this episode, Zack talks with Dr. Bosson about how they started, what they learned, and where they are going. A little about Dr. Bosson She is the Assistant Medical Director at the Los Angeles County EMS Agency. She is an Associate Clinical Professor at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and faculty and EMS fellowship director in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Harbor-UCLA. Here is the link to her paper Bosson N, Kazan C, Sanko S, Abramson T, Eckstein M, Eisner D, Geiderman J, Ghurabi W, Gudzenko V, Mehra A, Torbati S, Uner A, Gausche-Hill M, Shavelle D. Implementation of a regional extracorporeal membrane oxygenation program for refractory ventricular fibrillation out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Resuscitation. 2023 Jun;187:109711. doi: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109711. Epub 2023 Jan 30. PMID: 36720300. And here is Jason Bartos' editorial Bartos JA, Yannopoulos D. Starting an Extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation Program: Success is in the details. Resuscitation. 2023 Jun;187:109792. doi: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109792. Epub 2023 Apr 10. PMID: 37044354.

Jon Marinaro takes EDECMO through another great podcast.  This time he interviews Christine Stead, the CEO of ELSO.  She talks about ELSO is setting up standards for ECMO programs to try to make ECMO care at all hospitals to be safer.  She talks about how she works also with the device industry.  This involves working with the FDA as well as for future innovations.  She talks about the website and how to get your program certified.  Christine as a person is amazing.  She and her 5 person team runs an organization that has its hands in so many different areas.  Also, she is avid runner having completed 12 Boston Marathons!

In this episode Jon Marinaro joins the ED ECMO team and interviews his colleague Sundeep Guliani, MD about the use of an ECMO first strategy for Massive Pulmonary Embolism. Jon and Sundeep review the data and processes from their institution and from other institutions in the United States.  Could it be that ECLS could move the survival needle on this high mortality disease? Listen and find out! Hobohm L, Sagoschen I, Habertheuer A, Barco S, Valerio L, Wild J, Schmidt FP, Gori T, Münzel T, Konstantinides S, Keller K. Clinical use and outcome of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in patients with pulmonary embolism. Resuscitation. 2022 Jan;170:285-292. doi: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2021.10.007. Epub 2021 Oct 12. PMID: 34653550. Shinar Z, Hutin A. Pulmonary ECMO-ism: Let's add PEA to ECPR indications. Resuscitation. 2022 Jan;170:293-294. doi: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2021.11.004. Epub 2021 Nov 10. PMID: 34774708. Pudil J, Rob D, Smalcova J, Smid O, Huptych M, Vesela M, Kovarnik T, Belohlavek J. Pulmonary embolism related refractory out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation: Prague OHCA study post- hoc analysis. Eur Heart J Acute Cardiovasc Care. 2023 May 12:zuad052. doi: 10.1093/ehjacc/zuad052. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37172033. Karami M, Mandigers L, Miranda DDR, Rietdijk WJR, Binnekade JM, Knijn DCM, Lagrand WK, den Uil CA, Henriques JPS, Vlaar APJ; DUTCH ECLS Study Group. Survival of patients with acute pulmonary embolism treated with venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Crit Care. 2021 Aug;64:245-254. doi: 10.1016/j.jcrc.2021.03.006. Epub 2021 Mar 24. PMID: 34049258.

In this episode, Jon Marinaro and Zack Shinar go through the hot off the press Inception trial.  The trial was touted as a negative ECPR study though many reasons make this trial different then the ARREST trial.  They go through several important take home points for practitioners starting or running an ECPR/ECMO program.

In this podcast, Joe Tonna tells us how to approach hypothermia with ECPR patients.  He also goes through his paper RESCUE-IHCA giving us an immediate way to prognosticate in patients to use of ECMO or not.   Hypothermia - Resuscitation Nakashima T, Ogata S, Noguchi T, Nishimura K, Hsu CH, Sefa N, Haas NL, Bĕlohlávek J, Pellegrino V, Tonna JE, Haft J, Neumar RW. Association of intentional cooling, achieved temperature and hypothermia duration with in-hospital mortality in patients treated with extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation: An analysis of the ELSO registry. Resuscitation. 2022 Aug;177:43-51. doi: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2022.06.022. Epub 2022 Jul 3. PMID: 35788020. Hypothermia Meta-Analysis Duan J, Ma Q, Zhu C, Shi Y, Duan B. eCPR Combined With Therapeutic Hypothermia Could Improve Survival and Neurologic Outcomes for Patients With Cardiac Arrest: A Meta-Analysis. Front Cardiovasc Med. 2021 Aug 13;8:703567. doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2021.703567. PMID: 34485403; PMCID: PMC8414549. In Hospital Cardiac Arrest and ECPR Inclusion Tonna JE, Selzman CH, Girotra S, Presson AP, Thiagarajan RR, Becker LB, Zhang C, Rycus P, Keenan HT; American Heart Association Get With the Guidelines–Resuscitation Investigators. Resuscitation Using ECPR During In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (RESCUE-IHCA) Mortality Prediction Score and External Validation. JACC Cardiovasc Interv. 2022 Feb 14;15(3):237-247. doi: 10.1016/j.jcin.2021.09.032. Epub 2022 Jan 12. PMID: 35033471; PMCID: PMC8837656.

In this episode,  Zack interviews Florian Schmitzberger who just published a fantastic study that incorporates fourteen leaders within the ECPR community to hash out the specific procedural steps associated with ECPR.

This month Zack gives a few pearls from the recent Reanimate courses and annual ELSO meeting in Boston before he interviews Gawry Mork from Aarhus University about her fantastic recent paper.    Pearl #1 is about hand placement in cannulation.  Hold the ultrasound in your left an d needle in right.  Once in the vessel, drop the US probe and take your left hand and gently hold the needle. With your right hand grab the wire far enough up to be to insert into the vessel in one push. Gawry's paper has many interesting points.  Probably the biggest is the reasonable survivorship for prolonger arrests.  This is tied to equality of care for patient who live far from the closest ECMO center.

This month we are honored to have Neville Vlok on the show.  Neville has been one of the key physicians pushing for ECPR in South Africa.  In this episode, we explore what medicine and resuscitation looks like in South Africa, how ECMO has been utilized, and whether ECMO even makes sense in developing countries.  Vlok N, Hedding KA, Van Dyk MA. Saved by the pump: Two successful resuscitations utilising emergency department-initiated extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation in South Africa. S Afr Med J. 2021 Mar 2;111(3):208-210. doi: 10.7196/SAMJ.2021.v111i3.15366. PMID: 33944740.

Using ECMO for traumatic patients has had some promising papers through the years, but the data overall is still poor.  Justyna Swol has teamed up with ELSO to improve this deficiency by making a trauma carve out of the ELSO registry.  In this episode, Zack discusses with Justyna the many facets of ECMO in trauma.  A few pearls and references are below: Anticoagulation in ECMO is not mandatory.  A reasonable strategy is heparinized circuit with a titrating dose of systemic heparin as necessary in the trauma patient.  This includes everyone from isolated pulmonary contusions to intracranial hemorrhage. VV-ECMO similar to ARDS in medical causes can be used and likely offers survival benefit to those patients with post traumatic lung injury.  Initiating early (maybe PaO2 of 80 on 100% FiO2) is likely best. ECPR can be done in the traumatic arrest.  Best when done in parallel to the other resuscitative needs of the patient.  Data is promising in case series.  Need for bigger data sets is clear.

The Netherlands has undertaken a monumental task: provide ECPR to 100% of their country.  Dinis Reis Miranda and his team have put in place an unbelievably organized and robust project to improve the survival from cardiac arrest for their entire country.  Listen to Dinis explain about the project, their struggles, and this world changing experiment going on right now in Netherlands. Here is their projects website and some of its content - https://onscenetrial.com/

In this short episode, Zack makes two points.  One, it was tough to get to where we are with ECMO acceptance.  Two, cardiac arrest patients in PEA should be considered for ECPR.  Below is the full editorial Zack and Alice did recently in the Journal of Resuscitation on the topic.  It was born out of a fantastic German article centered looking at registry outcomes for PE and ECMO. Full Free Link to Editorial (until January 2022) - https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1eAXK_6ryqqpRd Article link - https://www.resuscitationjournal.com/article/S0300-9572(21)00403-2/fulltext

Have you ever pondered whether all the work over ECPR was worth it?  Even if you did save a few patients, does this really make sense from a societal standpoint?  Am I giving up my life on a project where my efforts could be better elsewhere?  Then this episode is for you (and me).  This month I talk with Melissa Barnes and Ryan Coute about the economics of cardiac arrest and specifically ECPR.  Ryan has just published a great paper in Resuscitation on the costs on OHCA.  We will talk with Ryan and Melissa Barnes, ECMO manager at Sharp Memorial Hospital about benefits and costs to society of OHCA and ECMO.  I learned several pearls from Ryan's paper as well as a paper by Grosse that Ryan references.  Below are the links to both papers with a couple graphs to try to wrap your head around.

Here is the conclusion for the interview of Jan Belohlavek and his Hyperinvasive Trial

Wait...ECPR works? To the believers, this has been a foregone conclusion.  To the rest of the world, the question of whether ECPR improves cardiac arrest survivorship has been in question. Jan Belohlavek and his Prague colleagues just presented their 8 year data showing better outcomes in cardiac arrest patients that got a grouped therapy of early transport, prehospital hypothermia, mechanical chest compressions, and ECMO over those who got a traditional resuscitation.  This study is key and contrasts to the Oslo study that we reviewed just a few months earlier.  Jan speaks with Zack about the details of the results and what were the keys to their success. Hyperinvasive trial study proposal - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3492121/ Jan's slides on Hyperinvasive Results

Heparin has been the mainstay of anticoagulation for ECMO patients for years.  In recent years, this has been challenged.  Bivalirudin has b ecome a potential better anticoagulant.  Troy Seelhammer in EDECMO episode 55 gave us some insight into this.  This month Ryan Rivosecchi and his crew at UPitt have released their findings in Critical Care Medicine.  This retrospective study suggests great improvement in major bleeding in patients who received Bivalirudin compare to Heparin (40.7% vs 11.7%, p < 0.001).  Listen to Ryan and Zack discuss anticoagulant use in ECMO patients in this month's episode. Rivosecchi RM, Arakelians AR, Ryan J, Murray H, Padmanabhan R, Gomez H, Phillips D, Sciortino C, Arlia P, Freeman D, Sappington PL, Sanchez PG. Comparison of Anticoagulation Strategies in Patients Requiring Venovenous Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation: Heparin Versus Bivalirudin. Crit Care Med. 2021 Mar 15. doi: 10.1097/CCM.0000000000004944. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33711003. .

In this episode, we dive into the abyss of resource allocation.  Much of the world is saying that the limited number of ECMO circuits should be used for COVID induced lung injury.  This means that ECPR initiatives have been shut down or severely limited.  Is this the right thing to do?  What does the data say?  What strategy gives the most benefit to the most people?  Zack invited Brian Grunau to discuss these topics as well as a recent ECPR paper out of Norway and study dealing with signs of life during CPR.