Efficacy of Plasma free Hemoglobin for detecting centrifugal pump thrombosis.

Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) is widely used as an indicator of pump thrombosis in a centrifugal pump. However, due to the low specificity of LDH, pump thrombosis is difficult to detect in the clinical environment. We measured plasma free hemoglobin (pfHb) with the portable device in ICU. The goal of this investigation is to evaluate its diagnostic ability for pump thrombosis. We enrolled 31 consecutive patients who needed Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) therapy and pfHb was determined with HemoCue The median of peak pfHb was significantly lower in the none thrombus group (0.03 g/dL) than that of in the thrombus group (0.05g/dL) ( Our results showed the efficacy of pfHb for detecting centrifugal pump thrombosis.