Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, also known as extracorporeal life support (ECLS), is an extracorporeal technique of providing prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to people whose heart and lungs are unable to provide an adequate amount of gas exchange or perfusion to sustain life. The technology for ECMO is largely derived from cardiopulmonary bypass, which provides shorter-term support with arrested native circulation.
In case of an arrhythmia causing haemodynamic instability, ECMO enables to perform a procedure with an adequate organ perfusion.
On November 8th, the electrophysiology team, from the 1st Chair and Department of Cardiology, responsible for intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography, in cooperation with the Cardiac Surgery Department, performed ablation with the support of ECMO on a patient suffering from electrical storm (electrical storm is defined as recurrent, haemodynamically destabilising ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation occurring two or more times over a 24 hour period, and usually requiring electrical cardioversion or defibrillation).