Nature Communications 8: Article number: 15112 (2017); Published 25 April 2017; Updated 23 May 2017 A patent based on the work reported in this Article was inadvertently omitted from the Competing interests section of this article. The Competing interests statement should read: E.M., A.F. and M.D. are co-authors on a patent entitled ‘Extracorporeal life support system and methods of use thereof’ (Patent no.