No extra risk of transmitting COVID-19 to ECMO transportation team.

A new study by COVID Critical, with abstract published in the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs’ Journal (ASAIO), shows there is no increase in the risk of transmissions of COVID-19 to teams transferring patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and placed on ECMO.

Previous experience has shown that transporting patients on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a safe and effective mode of transferring critically ill patients requiring maximum mechanical ventilator support to a quaternary care centre. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic posed new challenges. This is a multicentre retrospective study of 113 patients with confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, cannulated at an outside hospital and transported on ECMO to an ECMO centre.