Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) used during lung transplantation surgery produces primary hemostasis pathology detected by a platelet function analyzer (PFA) 200. The PFA 200 results return to the pre-operative values soon after ECMO explantation.
This phenomenon of primary hemostasis pathology detected by the PFA 200 was successfully used to prevent circuit thrombosis in patients on prolonged ECMO with respiratory or cardiac failure without the use of unfractionated heparin.