What’s the best Christmas gift?

A watch? A meaningful book? A smile? A comforting Christmas dinner?

While that question is in your mind, I’ll ask one that probably isn’t. Does distal limb ischemia keep you up at night? Probably not unless you’re an ECMO clinician.

When a clinical situation is so dire that a device must take over for a major organ system, life-threatening complications fill the corners of the room. ECMO specialists are the brave few who tackle these challenges. Snatching people back from the brink of death is the daily grind in ECMO, so these specialists spend their lives giving a great gift to the world. One of the greatest gifts, actually. What more could a person do for someone than save their life?

In the ECMO sphere, femoral canulation is a workhorse, or maybe a pack mule, because it’s trusty, reliable, and carries a heavy burden. Unfortunately, that “burden” happens to be the majority of the body’s volume blood flow, so even the femoral artery struggles to accept a cannula of requisite size. Since oxygen is life, occlusion of the femoral spells disaster for the limb downstream, precipitating everything from compartment syndrome to amputation.

ECMO specialists meet these issues on the daily battlefield, which is why we’re proud to assist in a new and wonderful way. As of last week, Transonic has stepped into a desperately-needed application: distal limb perfusion flow measurement.

Distal limb ischemia (DLI) has necessarily existed as long as femoral cannulation has, and various solutions have been tried, but they all have the same Achilles Heel: guesswork created by measurement surrogacy.

The only way to truly prevent DLI is with proper blood flow. The only way to maintain that flow is to measure it directly. But there has been no way to do that. Until now.

Transonic Flowsensors clip easily onto the catheter shunt tubing, giving the clinician fast, precise measurements of flow, allowing real-time monitoring and adjustment, because why try to cure compartment syndrome when you can prevent it?

Someone once said that, in the modern world of uncertainty and struggle, the best Christmas gift is peace. As a medical device manufacturer, we can’t give you peace, but maybe we can give you a little peace of mind.

So this is Transonic’s Christmas gift to everyone who works in ECMO. It’s our way of saying thank you, for all that you do.

Thanks for reading,

               Transonic Systems, Inc

                              The Measure of Better Results