Autopsy and clinical discrepancies in patients undergoing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation: a case series.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Extracorporeal life support is used as a salvage procedure to treat refractory cardiopulmonary failure. There are limited data addressing discrepancies between pre- and postmortem findings in patients undergoing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). We investigated discrepancies between clinical and autopsy findings in patients placed on ECMO to assess in what proportion of patients were there significant cardiovascular or other pathologies present that were not clinically apparent prior to death. METHODOLOGY: After institutional review board approval, a list of deceased ECMO patients who underwent autopsy examination from 2004 through 2015 was obtained from our institution..