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As ECMO therapy has become increasingly available, it is of importance for medical examiners and death investigators to be familiar with the procedure as well as its limitations. Familiarity with ECMO and its sequelae allows for the proper documentation of postmortem findings and fosters an informed determination of the cause and manner of death.
These findings indicate that the technique of percutaneous cannulation presented in this tutorial decreases complications frequently seen with surgical cutdown. The risk of conversion to surgical cutdown iswas low. The risk of stenosis of the femoral artery seems to be reduced if distal perfusion is confirmed by ultrasound at the end of the procedure.
The findings demonstrate that increased duration of erythrocyte storage is associated with decreased cell membrane deformability and that these changes are not readily reversible after transfusion.