Prolonged extracorporeal venoarterial bypass with a membrane oxygenator (ECMO) will sustain life for days or weeks in patients with acute cardiac or pulmonary failure. The technique has been studied primarily in adults with acute pulmonary insufficiency. In that group of moribund patients the survival rate is 10-15%. Several conditions of the newborn and infant might benefit from temporary cardiopulmonary support, but the problems of cannulation, coagulation, and scaling down equipment have led most investigators to focus on adults. Although the authors 1 and Soeter 2 have reported successful ECMO support in infants, newborn perfusion survival has not been reported. The authors have been studying ECMO in the laboratory for several years, and applied this technique to 27 patients. Thirteen of these cases were critically ill infants, four of which survived. This report describes that experience.
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M. Robin Jefferies (1979) studied this question.