The Kids Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Referral Service team will include a pediatric ECMO specialist, a cardiothoracic surgeon, scrub nurse and perfusionist.
Sydney Children’s Hospital Network has launched a statewide service to provide mobile equipment and specialised teams for critically ill children with reversable acute respiratory or cardiac failures.
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) removes carbon dioxide, oxygenates and recirculates blood, using a mechanical pump to do the work of the lungs and heart. This allows the organs to rest while the patient is recovering.
Since December 2022, mobile ECMO has been available for patients in the Children’s Hospital at Westmead and Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick.
The Kids ECMO Referral Service (KERS) will expand availability of the service to offer specialised advice and deployment to pediatric patients across New South Wales.
The state’s minister for health Ryan Park said he was proud to be showcasing the skills of the NSW healthcare workforce.
“KERS enhances equity of access to vital healthcare for children when they are at their most vulnerable and makes it possible to deliver lifesaving critical care across NSW,” said Mr Park.
“This service demonstrates the potential to change outcomes for children through collaboration not just across our paediatric services, but right across the health system.”
In general, ECMO is used when treating conditions like sepsis or other severe infections caused by the flu, bacteria or enterovirus. It can also be used in the treatment of other forms of heart and lung disease.
The speciliased KERS team will be led by a dedicated paediatric ECMO intensive care specialist. It will also comprise of a scrub nurse, a cardiothoracic surgeon and a perfusionist.
The team will work with the newborn and paediatric emergency transport service (NETS) to deploy within the hour, once designated as the right treatment option.
KERS medical director Dr Marino Festa said the initiative had the “potential to truly transform the care available to children and families”.
“KERS is a lifesaving service for children who are failing conventional intensive care and builds on the capacity of our two children’s hospitals to enable us to provide ECMO remotely,” he said.
“What we have been able to do is offer a referral service to local hospitals where they can get highly specialised advice and guidance on the most critically ill patients to determine if they will benefit from ECMO.
“If the answer is yes, we can deploy a team within an hour and get that child the urgent care they need while on the road, instead of waiting until they get to a paediatric hospital in Sydney.”
The first patient to be treated using a mobile ECMO through KERS was two-year-old Jack, who was born with severe meconium aspiration in Canberra.
Within 24 hours, the team had placed Jack on mobile ECMO at Canberra Hospital and transferred him to the Children’s Hospital at Westmead with the help of the NETS team.