Interprovincial spoke-to-hub transport using the Impella Recover LP 5.0 left ventricular assist device as a bridge to long-term circulatory support

Current hospital administrative practices categorize health care centres in a network of  'spokes' (primary care centres) and 'hubs' (tertiary care centres). For the treatment of cardiogenic shock, long-term left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) and transplant therapies are only used at a few hub centres nationwide and are, thus, only available to patients living in close proximity to these centres. The relatively lower technical requirements of the Impella Recover LP 5.0 LVAD (ABIOMED Inc, USA) translate into greater use by spoke centres for the short-term treatment of cardiogenic shock, and facilitate appropriate stabilization and subsequent transportation to a suitable hub centre. Based on a review of the literature, the present report describes the first case demonstrating successful use of the Impella Recover LP 5.0 LVAD, implanted under local anesthetic, for the purposes of interprovincial spoke-to-hub transport in a bridge-to-bridge-to-transplant procedure. By providing an economical and technically straightforward alternative to traditional extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, the present case demonstrates that less invasive LVADs are valuable to the spoke-and-hub model for delivery of specialized cardiac care.