Engineering techniques to improve Prehospital Extracorporeal Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (pECPR)

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is common, but survival rates remain below 10%. Extracorporeal Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (ECPR) is an advanced life-saving technology that can improve blood flow and sustain patients until further treatment. However, initiating prehospital ECPR is time, skill, and resource-intensive. This thesis develops and tests a novel rapid dilation technique and ECPR kit to address clinical limitations, potentially leading to wider adoption of ECPR and improved patient outcomes.