Paediatric ECMO program
Since the Vall d’Hebron Hospital paediatric and neonatal ECMO programme started in 2002, it has steadily progressed in terms of technical competence and patient numbers.
To date, we have carried out over 300 ECMO procedures, making us the centre with the highest yearly volume in Spain. All this is only possible thanks to the total involvement and commitment of all the professionals who treat these patients.
We guarantee integrated and personalised care based on ELSO guidelines, providing the highest level of human care to patients and families.
Our figures
These figures highlight and support the quality of our programmes, as they are compared with the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO): the largest ECMO patient registry in the world and the largest community of ECMO centres. The ELSO is a non-profit international consortium of healthcare institutions, researchers, and industry partners.
Team
We are a multidisciplinary team, specialising in ECMO and critical care for paediatric and neonatal patients. We offer integrated, holistic care, focussing on all areas of the disease and hospitalisation. Our more-than-20 years of professional practice and experience in over 300 ECMO procedures give us a level of expertise that translates into better results and better patient care.
Transport in ECMO
For most cases in which a child has severe respiratory or heart failure and requires ECMO at a hospital that does not provide this therapy, a conventional emergency service transfer can be carried out via ambulance or helicopter.
However, sometimes the patient’s condition is so severe that the only option is to have a specialist paediatric ECMO transport team transfer them with all the necessary equipment. We initiate the ECMO therapy at the patient’s location and then, once connected to the extracorporeal life support, transfer them to our centre.
Aware of this need, the Vall d’Hebron Paediatric ICU and the emergency service started a programme of paediatric transport in ECMO in 2019. The aim is to provide the therapy for every child who needs it, regardless of whether or not their hospital provides it. The Vall d’Hebron ECMO team is made up of a heart surgeon, two specialist paediatric ECMO nurses and two paediatric intensive care physicians, together with the SEM professionals.
Since the start, we have steadily increased the number of transfers: not only from centres in Catalonia, but also for children in Aragon, Navarre, Castile-La Mancha, Castile and Leon and even Mallorca, from where a patient was transferred by plane.
In recent months, a CatSalut instruction has been developed to regulate and organise paediatric ECMO transport in Catalonia, for which we are the reference centre. At the national level, the system is organised through CSUR accreditation. This is granted by the Spanish Ministry of Health to accredit reference system certification, which we are currently applying for, jointly with the SEM.
