ECMO in special cases

Survival of patients with malignancy over the last 30 years has continually improved due to advancements in aggressive chemotherapeutic regimens as well as supportive measures toward treatment and prevention of infection. 1,2 Even though cancer remains a significant cause of mortality in children, 5-year survival for childhood cancers, including hematologic malignancies and solid tumors, is greater than 80%. In these children, critical illness occurs either as a result of their malignancies and/or complications from treatment. Given improvements in survival, a more aggressive approach to the management of these complications in pediatric patients with malignancies has been encouraged, which has enlightened the medical community to the use of extracorporeal life support (ECLS) in this complex population. Evidence of this new approach was reported in 2009 by Gow et al. 3 when a survey of ECLS centers regarding utilization of ECLS for patients with malignancy found that 95% of respondent ECLS centers felt th...