An intensivist on a learning frenzy. Caring for the critically ill using evidence-based medicine.
Mortality in Cardiogenic shock, historically speaking, is around 50%. Everyone knows that we need to get better. An amazing push in sepsis management has significantly decreased the mortality of that pathology. The last decade has seen many advances towards improving mortality but without robust results, unfortunately. Inotropes and vasopressor have failed at saving lives. There …
Continue reading Impella vs. VA-ECMO for Cardiogenic Shock s/p Myocardial Infarction
Let's start off with the basics. ECMO is the medical abbreviation for Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation. This means that the system takes blood out of your body run its through a circuit, and puts oxygen into it. It can obviously do other things which I will cover below. There are two types of ECMO, VA …
Let me start off by saying that not every patient who is hypotensive is septic, contrary to what every medicine resident thinks. I could say that because I was a medicine resident at one point. There are 3 other types of shock that are not distributive. We are here to talk about the Cardiogenic kind …
Continue reading Cardiogenic Shock: Mechanical Circulatory Support; Rise of the Machines