Acute and Critical Care

Case Report

Cardiology/Thoracic Surgery
The Use of Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation in the Surgical Repair of Bronchial Rupture: Ju-Hee Park, Junghyeon Lim, Jaejin Lee, Hee Sung Lee; Korean J Crit Care Med. 2016;31(1):54-57. Published online February 29, 2016; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4266/kjccm.2016.31.1.54

Abstract PDF: Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) has been used successfully in critically ill patients with traumatic lung injury and offers an additional treatment modality. ECMO is mainly used as a bridge treatment to delayed surgical management; however, only a few case reports have presented the successful application of ECMO as intraoperative support during the surgical repair of traumatic bronchial injury. A 38-year-old man visited our hospital after a blunt chest trauma. His chest imaging showed hemopneumothorax in the left hemithorax and a finding suspicious for left main bronchus rupture. Bronchoscopy was performed and confirmed a tear in the left main bronchus and a congenital tracheal bronchus. We decided to provide venovenous ECMO support during surgery for bronchial repair. We successfully performed main bronchial repair in this traumatic patient with a congenital tracheal bronchus. We suggest that venovenous ECMO offers a good option for the treatment of bronchial rupture when adequate ventilation is not possible.

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