Background:
Extra-corporeal life support (ECLS) is an advanced cardio-pulmonary resuscitation technique which is reserved to the pulmonary and/or cardiac failure patients with an intact neurologic status. The aim is to describe our ECLS results on a pediatric patient population.

Material and Methods:
This is a retrospective cohort study includes all children (< 16years) who received ECLS during last 10years in the University Hospitals of Geneva. We wanted to see also if there are the differences in terms of complications between central and peripheral implantations.

Result:
47 patients received ECLS: 39central and 8peripheral implantations. All ECLS applications were veno- arterial type. Main indication was the circulatory failure following a cardiac operation (72.3%). The average duration on ECLS was 4.6±4.8 days (1 hour-26 days). Survival was 48.9% among all patients and 58.8% in patients after cardiac surgery. There was: 48.9% of bleeding complications on all patients: 51.3% and 37.5% in the central and peripheral ECLS respectively. 40.4% of infectious complications (46.2% central and 12.5% peripheral ECLS). 21.3% of mechanical complications (12.3% central and 62.5% peripheral ECLS). 19.1% of cerebral complications (12.8% in the central versus 50% in the peripheral ECLS).

Conclusion:
The ECLS treatment following cardiac surgery improves the survival of the high risk mortality patients when used with a good indication and timing. Hemorrhagic, infectious and thrombotic complications are more frequent for central ECLS. Technical, cerebral and lower limb ischemic complications are more frequent during peripheral ECLS implantations.