The official Barts ECMO Programme headed by a team of ECMO Consultants was established in 2016 as part of the Barts Heart Centre. This ended an era of perfusion labour intensive extemporary ECMO with overall disappointing outcomes. Today the ECMO unit provides a blend of post-cardiotomy, veno-venous and veno-arterial ECMO therapy to approximately 50 patients including retrieval patients annually. At its peak Barts also treated around 40 patients combined during the two waves of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Unit is now a participating member of the NHS England commissioned Service covering NE London.

The Perfusion team at Barts have invariably underpinned the ECMO service through providing device set up, prime and initiation of ECMO followed by 24/7 support.  This presentation aims to exhibit the 2024 ECMO benchmarking survey results providing us with a current snapshot and summary of practices in the UK. The Survey highlights potential areas of refinement for all to consider whilst foregrounding challenges that are being faced as a profession within ECMO. Increased ECMO recognition, research outcomes and improvements in specialist care now places ECMO as a valid life-saving therapy that is continuing to gain traction. How should we best collaborate with this as a profession?  

At Barts the roles and responsibilities of the Perfusionist providing support for an extensive cardiac service and simultaneously a high demand ECMO service comes with its own trials. This survey has demonstrated units being presented with Perfusionist-free models of ECMO delivery including our own HEMS roadside e-CPR Project. These changes confer the need for a shared forum within the perfusion community to consider how to best process, manage and respond to the advancement of specialist therapies like ECMO that traditionally Perfusionists have had central roles within.            

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