St. Christopher's Hospital Gains International Recognition for Life-Saving ECMO Treatment

St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children has received the “Excellence in Life Support Award” from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO), an international consortium of centers offering extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for support of failing organ systems in infants, children and adults.

The “Excellence in Life Support Award” recognizes those centers that demonstrate an exceptional commitment to evidence-based processes and quality measures, staff training and continuing education, patient satisfaction and ongoing clinical research. St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children is one of the few centers to receive the award since its inception in 2006.

ECMO in any facility indicates a commitment to exceptional patient care, specialized equipment and supplies, defined patient protocols, advanced education of all staff members and high quality standards. ECMO is one of the most advanced forms of life support available to patients experiencing acute failure of the cardio-respiratory system. ECMO allows time for the patient’s lungs or heart to heal by using a heart-lung machine to oxygenate and purify the blood outside the body over a period of time.

St. Christopher’s ECMO program has been in place since 2001. It is an intense, multidisciplinary program comprised of specialty nurses, profusionists, respiratory physicians, surgeons and neonatologists. While it is often used for infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), it is also used for patients in the Intensive Care and Cardiac Care units.

A testament to the strength of the program at St. Christopher’s is that more than 92 percent of infants receiving ECMO services for respiratory support at the hospital survive. This is well above the 76 percent national survival rate.

The ECMO team has developed training programs and strategies for reaching performance excellence measures to assure the highest quality of ECMO services.

Since 1875, St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children has been providing exceptional patient care and advancing new pediatric treatments through research and innovation. Through affiliations with Drexel University College of Medicine and Temple University School of Medicine, St. Christopher’s is a teaching hospital helping to train the next generation of professionals in pediatric medicine.

The 189-bed hospital is committed to delivering high quality family- and patient-centered care to children from throughout the Philadelphia area and around the world. Its highly acclaimed programs include its Cystic Fibrosis Center, Level I Pediatric Trauma Center, Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), as well as its Burn Center, which is the only dedicated pediatric burn center in the area. In 2009 St. Christopher’s achieved Magnet status, which is one of the nation's highest forms of recognition for nursing excellence.

St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children is part of the Tenet Health System. To learn more about St. Christopher’s, visit www.stchristophershospital.com.

ELSO is a consortium of health care professionals and scientists dedicated to the development and evaluation of novel therapies for support of failing organ systems. The organization promotes ongoing research into the most effective treatment methods by maintaining a registry of patients receiving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and providing educational programs for member centers and the broader medical and lay communities. More than 156 international ECMO centers are members of ELSO, which is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. To learn more about ELSO, visit http://www.elso.med.umich.edu.

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