Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) Program

Beyond providing unmatched clinical care at Boston Children's, we're working around the clock to design approaches that let kids be kids. ECMO, which stands for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, is an advanced technology that functions as a replac...

Beyond providing unmatched clinical care at Boston Children's, we're working around the clock to design approaches that let kids be kids. ECMO, which stands for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, is an advanced technology that functions as a replacement for a critically ill child's heart and lungs. It's used to support a child who is awaiting surgery, or to give a child's vital organs time to recover from heart surgery or disease. The ECMO Program is housed within the hospital's Medical-Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Here, a multi-disciplinary team of cardiac intensive care unit physicians, nurses and specially trained respiratory therapists provide customized ECMO care for each child they treat. Specialists in pediatric infectious diseases, pulmonary disease and pediatric neurology also are readily available to help manage and monitor cardiac ECMO patients.