# Dr. Dopers: Please Name This Device

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dr-dopers-please-name-this-device/226584>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 29, 2004, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dr-dopers-please-name-this-device/226584 "2004-01-29T14:39:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dr-dopers-please-name-this-device/226584/1 "2004-01-29T14:39:20Z")

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This medical device, similar in funtional concept to the dialysis machine, is essentially an artifical lung. It removes a patient’s blood from their body, oxygenates it, and then returns it to the patient’s body.

I had heard about it briefly a few weeks ago on one of the local affiliate’s “human interest” stories about a young woman who’s pulmonary system had shut down from viral pneumonia. This machine “breathed” for her, oxygenating her blood for her when her lungs could not. It was credited with being essential to saving her life.

It was a simple two-syllable name (tyco, lyco, elco, something, I don’t remember…), although I conceed that that may have been a manufacturer’s name, and not the official medical name for the device, such as the “pulmonary hemo-oxygenator” or such. If it’s Latin, please translate.

I am **not** asking about a **ventilator** machine. Re-read the first paragraph.

And before pedantic nit-pickers jump all over me for comparing it to a dialysis machine, I likened the two to one another because both take “something” from the human body, do something to it, and then put that modified “something” back.

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**Author:** ![edwino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@edwino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwino)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dr-dopers-please-name-this-device/226584/2 "2004-01-29T14:43:06Z")

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Perhaps you are thinking about an ECMO? **E** xtra **c** orporeal **m** embrane **o** xygenation.