Extracorporeal Gas Exchange: When To Start And How To End?
In the last decade, primarily following the H1N1 pandemics [1], the extracorporeal respiratory assist is increasingly used [2, 3]. The acronym “ECMO”, i.e., ExtraCorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, is, however, somehow misleading as the artificial extracorporeal assist may affect both oxygenation and CO2 removal, as well as the hemodynamics, depending on how it is applied.