Breakthrough! China-made ECMO enters the clinical stage

  • 2021-11-11
Xi'an Jiaotong University First Affiliated Hospital announced on the 8th that in vitro membrane pulmonary oxygenation equipment (ECMO) jointly developed by the hospital and Sichuan University National Biomedical Materials Engineering Technology Research Center, Mechanics Institute of Xi'an Jiaotong University takes the lead to enter the clinical stage in China.

  ECMO provides continuous in vitro breathing and circulation to patients with severe heart and lung failure, gaining valuable time for rescue. ECMO has become well known to the public since the outbreak of COVID-19, but its core technologies have long been monopolized abroad so that equipment and consumables are expensive.

  Yuan Zuxuan, director of the Cardiovascular Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University's First Affiliated Hospital, said the cardiovascular team has engaged in ECMO clinical applications and related research for more than 20 years. The team is not only one of the earliest ECMO clinical work units, but also one of the earliest units on research and development of membrane oxygen concentrators, perfusion lines and other medical devices. In 2017, the team jointly conducted further design, research and development on long-lasting anticoagulant coatings on whole blood contact surface of ECMO equipment, magnetic levitation centrifugal pumps, ultrasonic flow probes, programmed monitoring systems and ECMO membrane lungs.

  Zhuang Jian, a professor in Mechanics Institute of Xi'an Jiaotong University Sciences, said that before the outbreak of COVID-19, the research and development team had basically completed the sample trial of ECMO centrifugal pump equipment and a full range of consumables, and conducted experiments on large animals with anticoagulant coatings. In the research and development of this project, the team fully analyzed and compared the advantages and disadvantages of similar products abroad and the existing problems of clinical use, designed domestic ECMO for domestic clinical needs.

  The first domestic ECMO system developed by the team and successfully applied to clinical, is expected to significantly reduce the domestic price of ECMO products, promote the spread of ECMO technology to primary hospitals, so that more acute and critical patients benefit from it.
    
    Source: CCTV News Client

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