Childen's Hospital Boston 300 Longwood Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 355-6000
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Clinical Services:
Cardiac ECMO Program
Back to For Patients and Families
Children's Hospital Boston is home to one of the largest pediatric ECMO programs in the world. ECMO, which stands for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, is an advanced technology that functions as a replacement for a critically ill child's heart and lungs. It is used to support a child who is awaiting surgery, or to give a child's vital organs time to recover from heart surgery or disease.
Children's ECMO Program provides services to critically ill children in the New England region, and to those who are referred from other states and internationally. It serves between 50 and 60 patients with severe respiratory or cardiac problems each year. Since its establishment in 1984, the ECMO Program has supported more than 800 children.
In the Spotlight
Joe Alonzo ECMO technology celebrates 20 years of saving lives
Joe Alonzo, 18, is one of Children's Hospital Boston's first patients whose life was saved by ECMO. Read his story and others in the article, "A cutting-edge technology grows up," about the 20th Anniversary of Children's ECMO program.
The Cardiac ECMO Program, a subdivision of the Children's Hospital Boston ECMO Program, is housed within the hospital's state-of-the-art Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, where a multi-disciplinary team of Cardiac Intensive Care Unit physicians, nurses and specially trained respiratory therapists provide top-notch ECMO care to patients and support to their families.

Other sub-specialty physicians, such as those who specialize in pediatric infectious diseases, pulmonary disease and pediatric neurology also are readily available to help manage and monitor cardiac ECMO patients.

Unsurpassed expertise
Throughout the years, the Cardiac ECMO Program at Children's has gained considerable expertise, minimized complications and increased its success rate for survival to 60 percent, higher than the national average of around 40 percent.
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