Prehospital ECPR in Moravia Silesia Region

Patients undergoing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) have a poor prognosis and a good long-term neurological outcome is achieved in about 10% of them. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) can lead to an improvement in neurological outcome of up to 30% in a selected group of these critically ill patients. CPR for OHCA using ECMO in the hospital after patient admission (ECPR) is very demanding and depends on the best collaboration of pre-hospital care components with the hospital management. As good as the coordination of the different phases of care and transport is, patients often arrive to the hospital relatively late (over 60 minutes), and although the process of diagnosis and indication and ECMO implantation itself is rapid (approximately 15 minutes), the overall time from collapse to ECMO initiation is relatively long (over 60 minutes). It is this time, i.e. the duration of low organ perfusion during CPR, that may be the key parameter in determining the overall neurological outcome of treatment and prognosis of patients. Shortening this interval by having the ECMO team go to well-defined OHCA cases simultaneously with the ambulance car of the Emergency Department and connecting the patient to ECMO already in the field may lead to an improvement in the neurological outcome of the treatment of OHCA patients. In many locations abroad, this model is already used, and patients are connected to ECMO already in the field. Whether the model of field ECPR can be used in the Moravian-Silesian Region depends on a number of variables. These include the logic of information acquisition and selection of suitable patients, the logic of transporting the team and material to the scene, and the logic of connection with the provision of a safe and suitable environment for the ECMO implantation itself. The goal of this study is to validate the feasibility of the method on a simulated ECPR OHCA and further implant the mobile ECPR project in the Moravian-Silesian region.