Future noninvasive monitoring

Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) technologies have witnessed significant improvements in the latest decades with a consequent larger application both in the cardiac surgery field and intensive care units. This trend has led to an overall increase in the number of treated patients, with a parallel escalation in their complexity. Consequently, clinicians need to face several challenges in terms of patient’s management and require advanced technologies to support their decision-making process. While clinical experience is still the milestone of a good medical treatment, the scientific and clinical communities have moved toward the development of more advanced, integrated, less invasive, and smart monitoring systems. These monitoring techniques address both the patient body and the ECLS circuit, considering the interaction between these two players and their peculiar characteristics. Ideally, every organ and system can be monitored during ECLS through invasive and noninvasive methods. This chapter aims to systematically analyze all available monitoring systems for ECLS patients and compare the more traditional ones with the newest and innovative techniques. Moreover, it provides the basic tools to identify the best monitoring approach for each patient and it offers an overview of future directions of this field.