Summary
ECMO post cardiac surgery can have detrimental benefit on survival outcomes. There is a survival rate of 30.8% for patients who underwent ECMO for PCCS, where without ECMO salvage PCCS is inevitably a fatal state for patients. From an ethical viewpoint, one should also consider the possibility of ECMO in prolonging patient’s hospital stay without significant improvement or addition to prognostic benefit and therefore careful patient selection should be made through inter-speciality discussions. The patient’s best interests should always be considered before initiating any medical intervention with the risks and benefits being weighed out judiciously for each case. Liaising with colleagues will help professionals come to an appropriate decision to prolong life with ECMO or to prevent futile attempts. Risk stratification could also be conducted to determine if prophylactic ECMO would be suitable for use in high-risk patients to help improve survival rates.