VA-ECMO can serve as an effective bridge to surgery in patients with cardiogenic shock and multi-organ failure due to acute mechanical valve dysfunction.
VA-ECMO enabled stabilization for surgery in acute prosthetic valve failure with shock; leaves open its broader role in multiorgan failure.
A 52-year-old male patient, who underwent mitral replacement with a mechanical prosthesis as a child, sustained a cardiac arrest which was successfully resuscitated. Further investigation showed prosthesis malfunction with significant regurgitation in the context of multi-organ failure. In such a life-threatening condition, veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was considered as a rescue procedure to achieve optimisation of clinical status to allow definitive surgical treatment. An unusual complete fracture of the prosthesis was subsequently identified as the cause of acute dysfunction.
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Arnáiz-García et al. (2017) studied this question.
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