ECMO in Trauma with Dr. Rob Leeper

So today's talk is going to be on ECMO use and trauma.

Fascinating topic.

We usually don't, I mean, we're not doing this locally in Halifax.

Not routinely.

I mean, not for trauma specifically.

But so Rob, why don't you just, can you first maybe get into some of the more recent involvement that you've had with training for ECMO? Because I understand that you've done some certification around ECMO insertion and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, for sure.

That would be a really boring talk.

But it just happened the last week when we were chatting about meeting for this podcast.

I was coming back from the ELSO ECMO simulation course, two days in Ann Arbor.

And it was awesome.

To briefly summarize, we are, after many, many years of a bit of a busy ECMO program, but not as organized.

We're trying to be more organized at our hospitals.

And especially making more available to trauma centers.

We're training a bunch more people.

And, you know, yeah, that's why a bunch of us from my center are doing the course now and getting our skills really up to snuff.

Awesome.

So for the listeners who don't use it regularly, can you, in simple terms, describe what is ECMO?

And that's actually pretty easy.

And I kept thinking for all these years when I put people on and be on long runs that there was something magical or really like impossible to comprehend about the interface, the controller, what was going on.

It's really simple.

It's a set of tubes, cannulas, and then You know, lines that go typically in or out of a vein or in a vein back into an artery, like some kind of a drainage or a turn part of the limb.

And then the circuit is simply composed of basically three main parts.

You know, you've got a pump that pushes the blood around.

You've got a blender that supplies a mixture of, you know, oxygen and airflow to a lung, a membrane lung, which exchanges the gas with the blood.

So today's talk is going to be on ECMO use and trauma.

Fascinating topic.

We usually don't, I mean, we're not doing this locally in Halifax.

Not routinely.

I mean, not for trauma specifically.

But so Rob, why don't you just, can you first maybe get into some of the more recent involvement that you've had with training for ECMO? Because I understand that you've done some certification around ECMO insertion and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, for sure.

That would be a really boring talk.

But it just happened the last week when we were chatting about meeting for this podcast.

I was coming back from the ELSO ECMO simulation course, two days in Ann Arbor.

And it was awesome.

To briefly summarize, we are, after many, many years of a bit of a busy ECMO program, but not as organized.

We're trying to be more organized at our hospitals.

And especially making more available to trauma centers.

We're training a bunch more people.

And, you know, yeah, that's why a bunch of us from my center are doing the course now and getting our skills really up to snuff.

Awesome.

So for the listeners who don't use it regularly, can you, in simple terms, describe what is ECMO?

And that's actually pretty easy.

And I kept thinking for all these years when I put people on and be on long runs that there was something magical or really like impossible to comprehend about the interface, the controller, what was going on.

It's really simple.

It's a set of tubes, cannulas, and then You know, lines that go typically in or out of a vein or in a vein back into an artery, like some kind of a drainage or a turn part of the limb.

And then the circuit is simply composed of basically three main parts.

You know, you've got a pump that pushes the blood around.

You've got a blender that supplies a mixture of, you know, oxygen and airflow to a lung, a membrane lung, which exchanges the gas with the blood.