OBJECTIVES To conduct an exploration of the hospital costs of extracorporeal life support therapy. Extracorporeal life support seems an efficient therapy for acute, potentially reversible cardiac or respiratory failure, when conventional therapy has been inadequate, or as bridge to transplant, but unfortunately, no evidence in randomized controlled trials is delivered yet. DESIGN Single-cente...

In today’s Lancet, Yih-Sharng Chen and colleagues show the possible benefi ts of extracorporeal life-support in adults receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in hospital for more than 10 min for problems of cardiac origin. Irrespective of the advancements made in con ventional CPR, median survivals to discharge after involvement of emergency medical services are only 6·4% for out-of-hosp...

OBJECTIVES Lemierre's syndrome cause by methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus is rare, but can lead to necrotizing pneumonia and septicaemia. When treating such patient with extracorporeal life support source control can be both challenging and controversial. METHODS In this report we present a 12 year old male who presented with Lemierre's syndrome from which he developed septic shock ...

We report the case of an asthmatic patient with blunt trachea and left main bronchus injuries who developed acute severe asthma after surgical repair. Despite medical treatment and ventilatory support, asthma persisted with high airway pressures and severe respiratory acidosis. We proposed venovenous extracorporeal life support for CO(2) removal which allowed arterial blood gas normalization an...