ECMO (pronounced eck-mo) stands for extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation. Extra-corporeal means 'outside of the body'.
It is a form of life-support that we offer to patients with the most severe forms of heart and lung failure.
Royal Papworth Hospital is commissioned by the National Specialised Commissioning Team to provide ECMO to patients with potentially reversible severe acute respiratory failure. Royal Papworth is one of only seven centres in the country to offer this service, alongside partners in Manchester, Leicester, Bristol, and three centres in London.
An ECMO machine at Royal Papworth Hospital
We support the East of England, regularly retrieving patients from hospitals across this region 24 hours-a-day. Our specialist retrieval team is available to go and rapidly stabilise and retrieve patients referred to the service, as well as offering advice and support.
This is part of a co-ordinated national response service to ensure all patients have year-round access to ECMO in England.
What is ECMO?
ECMO is a technique that oxygenates blood outside the body. It can be used in potentially reversible severe respiratory failure when conventional ventilation is unable to oxygenate the blood adequately.
The aim of ECMO in respiratory failure is to allow the injured lung to recover whilst avoiding certain recognised complications associated with conventional ventilation. It is high risk and is therefore only used as a matter of last resort in difficult cases.
The machine removes blood from the patient, taking out carbon dioxide from the blood and adding oxygen and then returning it to the body, therefore doing the job of the lungs to allow them time to recover. For this reason it is sometimes referred to as an 'artificial lung'.
ECMO is a highly specialised technique which requires the input of intensive care specialists, ECMO-trained nurses and perfusion scientists.
An ECMO machine does the job of someone's lungs by taking carbon dioxide out of the blood and adding in oxygen
The ECMO service at Royal Papworth Hospital
As a specialist heart and lung centre, Royal Papworth Hospital is renowned for its experience using ECMO for either cardiac or respiratory support over many years. The hospital is registered with the international ExtraCorporeal Life Support Organisation (ELSO).
The hospital provides the ECMO service to patients in Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Essex.
In addition to providing ECMO on site, Royal Papworth Hospital has developed a national retrieval service to quickly and safely assess and transfer patients between referring hospitals and the ECMO centres.
One of our teams preparing to go on an ECMO retrieval
We typically receive around 30 patients each year but we are flexible and can increase our capacity in response to higher demand, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We also support the national service by accepting patients from the other centres if they reach full capacity.
ECMO during COVID-19
The number of ECMO patients across the UK surged dramatically during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. ECMO has been used for the most seriously ill COVID-19 patients who have failed to respond to other forms of ventilation. It supports the patient by taking over the job of their lungs, allowing their body to rest while medical and nursing teams apply other treatment methods.
Usually at Royal Papworth Hospital we have up to five respiratory ECMO patients at any one time, with 35 ECMO beds available across the seven centres. In winter 2020/21, our ECMO service peaked at 21 patients and was featured by BBC News, with up to 90 ECMO beds occupied nationally.
Find out more about how our ECMO team met the increased demand caused by COVID-19.