ECMO requires constant monitoring and assessment in order to maintain proper oxygen saturation levels, blood pressure, and circulatory activity (Schuerer et al. 2008; Mielck & Quintel 2005). Institutional experience and multidisciplinary focus are both of extreme importance in determining patient outcome following ECMO, as technological innovations and the high-risk of the procedure make an ongoing knowledge base and expertise level a major determiner of outcome (Schuerer et al. 2008). As serious complications including infection, instability of oxygenation, thrombosis, and volume requirements can all occur, patients should be treated in a manner comparable to an acute stroke response -- increased risk for disrupted blood flow is a definite result of an ECMO procedure (Yang 2011). ECMO can only last a few days, and decreased fluid requirements and increased pulmonary function are both indicators that the weaning process should begin (Yang 2011). Mortality rates for ECMO vary significantly depending on the specific diagnosis, but range from fifty to seventy percent; though these numbers are high, it should be stressed that as an intervention of last resort ECM is often use din cases that ultimately prove incurable, which contributes to this mortality rate (Yang 2011). Employing ECMO interventions can also be cost effective in...

Implications for perioperative nursing are quite extensive, as these procedures can be used during times of surgically necessary or contributed cardiopulmonary distress or loss of function, and as the procedure itself constitutes an initial (and in some views, an ongoing) surgery, perioperative nursing procedures are an essential part of the support and successful carrying out of an ECMO intervention (Mielck & Quintel 2005; Schuerer et al. 2008). Qulaity improvement in ECMO support trhough the identification of specific support strategies has been a major cause of improvement to the procedure (Schuerer et al. 2008).