Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation after cardiac arrest in children: what do we know?

The use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) as a resuscitative measure during or after manual cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) shows sharply contrasting results. To assess the added value of ECMO in this situation and looking for predictors of mortality we performed a meta-analysis of individual patients collected from observational studies. An electronic Pubmed search restricted to English language publications between 1990 and 2007 using a consensus restrictive criterion retrieved 462 titles.