THE NEXT GENERATION ECMO CANNULATION TRAINING SYSTEM

Abstract

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation cannulation (ECMO) is a life-saving procedure that temporarily replaces the cardiopulmonary system. To enable the procedure, one must apply cannulation to reroute the blood to the ECMO machine. Simulation based training (SBT) is proved to improve the performance of medics especially for critical procedures such as ECMO. The current pandemic proved the need for electronic cardiopulmonary resuscitation, as COVID-19 causes heart and lung failure. The proposed solution is a SBT that tackles designing and implementing a human circulatory emulation system for the context of ECMO. The thesis summarizes the technologies used in the state-of-the-art critical care human circulatory systems, focusing on cannulation, catheterization, and auxiliary devices. The solution is part of the overall ECMO SBT environment subsystem. The cannulation simulator comprises the closed-loop, cannulation access points, and embedded system. The closed-loop is the physical emulation of the blood vessels. A cannulation access point is the emulated entry area of the cannula in the femoral and jugular region. The embedded system is the system's brain that controls the system transducers. The main parts of the system were completed successfully. This work offers organizations summery of existing emulators to get familiarized with the state-of-the-art technology and expand to implement the more extensive reach of state-of-the-art embedded system practices.