Extracorporeal Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (ECPR)

More than 350,000 patients in the United States and more than 37,000 patients in Europe suffer from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest per year. Extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) is the initiation of veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA ECMO) during refractory cardiac arrest, that is failure to obtain return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) after prolonged conventional resuscitation attempts. The use of VA ECMO enables clinicians to establish a “bridge to therapy” (such as emergency coronary angiography), “bridge to decision” or “bridge to recovery” while enabling proper organ perfusion. ECPR has been recently shown to have the potential to improve survival and neurological outcomes compared to conventional CPR. Therefore, ECPR has gained wider application rates in carefully selected patients and has been advocated in international guidelines. Different strategies, such as vehicle-based or helicopter-borne ECPR programs, have been designed in metropolitan areas.

Led by an international team of subject experts, this Research Topic will investigate the emerging trends in ECPR, patient selection criteria, site of cannulation (pre-hospital versus in-hospital), methods of cannulation and patient outcomes vary widely across institutions. The topic editors encourage submission of all manuscript types including original research, reviews and case reports.