• Fabio Ius, Wiebke Sommer, Igor Tudorache, Murat Avsar, Thierry Siemeni, Jawad Salman, Jakob Puntigam, Joerg Optenhoefel, Mark Greer, Tobias Welte, Olaf Wiesner, Axel Haverich, Marius Hoeper, Christian Kuehn, and Gregor Warnecke.
• Department of Cardiothoracic, Transplant and Vascular Surgery, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany ius.fabio@mh-hannover.de ius.r@libero.it.
• Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg. 2015 Jun 1; 20 (6): 761-7.

ObjectivesPatients with respiratory failure may benefit from veno-venous and veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support. We report on our initial experience of veno-veno-arterial (v-v-a) ECMO in patients with respiratory failure.MethodsBetween January 2012 and February 2014, 406 patients required ECMO support at our institution. Here, we retrospectively analysed the characteristics and outcomes of patients commenced on either veno-venous or veno-arterial ECMO due to respiratory failure, and then switched to v-v-a ECMO.ResultsTen (2%) patients proceeded to v-v-a ECMO. The underlying conditions were acute respiratory distress syndrome (n = 3), end-stage pulmonary fibrosis (n = 5) and respiratory failure after major thoracic surgery (n = 1) and Caesarean section (n = 1). In all of these patients, ECMO was initially started as veno-venous (n = 9) or veno-arterial (n = 1) ECMO but was switched to a veno-veno-arterial (v-v-a) approach after a mean of 2 (range, 0-7) days. Reasons for switching were: haemodynamic instability (right heart failure, n = 5; pericardial tamponade, n = 1; severe mitral valve regurgitation, n = 1; haemodynamic instability following cardiopulmonary resuscitation, n = 1 and evidence of previously unknown atrial septal defect with pulmonary hypertension and Eisenmenger syndrome, n = 1) and upper-body hypoxaemia (n = 1). ECMO-related complications were bleeding (n = 3) and leg ischaemia (n = 2). Seven patients were successfully taken off ECMO with 4 being bridged to recovery and a further 3 to lung transplantation after a mean of 11 (range, 9-18) days. Five patients survived until hospital discharge and all of them were alive at the end of the follow-up.ConclusionsVeno-veno-arterial ECMO is a technically feasible rescue strategy in treating patients presenting with combined respiratory and haemodynamic failure.© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. All rights reserved.

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