REBOA (Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta) is used to gain proximal control over non-compressible hemorrhage below the diaphragm. The concept has been covered extensively in social media.

Weingart did a wonderful job describing REBOA using the 12F Chek-Flo and CODA catheter here:

https://emcrit.org/podcasts/reboa/

Our good friend Rob Orman from ERCAST.org and EMRAP interviewed Zaf Qasim:

http://blog.ercast.org/reboa/

And Weingart revisited REBOA, spoke with Joe DuBose, and described the newest REBOA catheter, the PryTime 7F ER REBOA catheter that most of us now use:

https://emcrit.org/podcasts/er-reboa/

…So we aren’t going to rehash any of that stuff in this episode!

In this episode, Zack takes a deep dive into REBOA implementation, physiology, and complications with four of the biggest movers in the world of REBOA:

Dr. David Callaway Military Trauma Specialist

Dr. David Callaway is an Emergency Physician from the Carolinas Health System, who also serves on the Defense Health Board Subcommittee on Trauma and Injury as well as the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care- two of the key U.S. advisory bodies for battlefield trauma care.

He is the Co- Chairman of the Committee for Tactical Emergency Casualty Care, a best practices R&D group charged with translating battlefield lessons learned to civilian high threat prehospital medicine.

Dr. Callaway describes how they implement REBOA in their busy trauma unit and some of the data behind its use.

Dr. Tatuya Norii University of New Mexico

But REBOA is not without controversy. So Zack turned to Dr. Tatsuyo Norii, from the University of New Mexico, who published a study that showed that REBOA may result in increased mortality in certain patients.¹ Dr. Norii believes that we should avoid REBOA in patients with traumatic brain injury and patients with multi-system trauma.

Shinar and Dr. Norii also discussed how REBOA may also be considered non-trauma situations where patients are bleeding to death: ruptured ectopic pregnancy, postpartum hemorrhage, ruptured abdominal aneurysm, and perhaps some patients with hemorrhagic gastrointestinal bleeding.

Then, Zack turned to Dr. Austin Johnson from UC Davis. They do a deep dive into the physiology of of a patient on REBOA and its nuances in traumatic brain injury.

And lastly, They discussed the concept of partial REBOA (P-REBOA) and the concept of “windsocking”. As the balloon size is decreased by decreasing the volumes within it, the flow around the balloon is not linear. This becomes increasingly important as we consider ‘partial REBOA’, prolonged occlusion, and balloon takedown, a topic published by Dr. Johnson a few months ago.²

Finally, we wrap things up with a discussion with Zaf Qasim, REBOA guru who teaches the REBOA modules at our endovascular resuscitation conference, REANIMATE.

Do you want to learn how to aggressively manage the crashing trauma and medical patients using ECMO, ECPR, REBOA, ultrasound and advanced resuscitation techniques?

REANIMATE 4 is September 21-22, 2017:

http://reanimateconference.com/register/

References

1.

Norii T, Crandall C, Terasaka Y. Survival of severe blunt trauma patients treated with resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta compared with propensity score-adjusted untreated patients. J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2015;78(4):721-728. [PubMed]

2.

Johnson M, Neff L, Williams T, DuBose J, EVAC S. Partial resuscitative balloon occlusion of the aorta (P-REBOA): Clinical technique and rationale. J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2016;81(5 Suppl 2 Proceedings of the 2015 Military Health System Research Symposium):S133-S137. [PubMed]

EDECMO 35 – REBOA REVISITED!

EDECMO Podcast