Mobile Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation for Covid-19 Does Not Pose Extra Risk to Transport Team

Javidfar, J., Labib, A., Ragazzo, G., Kurtzman, E., Callahan, M., Heinsar, S., Gudzenko, V., Barrett, P., Binongo, J., Wei, J. W., Fraser, J., Suen, J. Y., Li Bassi, G., Peek, G., & Covid-19 Critical Care Consortium (2022). ASAIO journal (American Society for Artificial Internal Organs : 1992), 68(2), 163–167.

Previous experience has shown that transporting patients on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a safe and effective mode of transferring critically ill patients requiring maximum mechanical ventilator support to a quaternary care center. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic posed new challenges. This is a multicenter, retrospective study of 113 patients with confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, cannulated at an outside hospital and transported on ECMO to an ECMO center.