ECMO support can facilitate remarkable myocardial recovery in cases of severe myocardial dysfunction following blunt head injury, though overall survival depends on neurological outcomes.
Brain death may override myocardial recovery on ECMO; leaves open its role in trauma-related cardiomyopathy.
Severe myocardial dysfunction after blunt head injury is a rare but potentially lethal complication. We describe remarkable myocardial recovery after severe hemodynamic deterioration in a young man with brain injury, due to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support. Because of the severity of brain damage, the patient succumbed after diagnosis of brain death. Postmortem histopathological examination of the heart showed severe myocardial necrosis.
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Wippermann et al. (2008) studied this question.
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