Study shows young, healthy adults died from COVID-19 due to ECMO shortage

 

An example of why it is important for people to get vaccinated, even when they feel they themselves are at low risk, to reduce  spreading it to others.

 

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944754

 News Release 25-Feb-2022
90 percent who qualified but did not receive ECMO died in hospital
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Nearly 90 percent of COVID-19 patients who qualified for, but did not receive, ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) due to a shortage of resources during the height of the pandemic died in the hospital, despite being young with few other health issues, according to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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Approximately 90% of patients for whom health system capacity to provide ECMO was unavailable died in the hospital, compared to 43% mortality for patients who received ECMO, despite both groups having young age and limited comorbidities.

 

“Even when saving ECMO for the youngest, healthiest and sickest patients, we could only provide it to a fraction of patients who qualified for it,” Gannon said. “I hope these data encourage hospitals and federal authorities to invest in the capacity to provide ECMO to more patients.”

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“Throughout the pandemic, it has been challenging for many outside of medicine to see the real-world impact of hospitals being ‘strained’ or ‘overwhelmed,’” said co-author Matthew Semler, MD, assistant professor of Medicine at VUMC. “This article helps make those effects tangible. When the number of patients with COVID-19 exceeds hospital resources, young, healthy Americans die who otherwise would have lived.”

 

In total, the risk of death for patients who received ECMO at a specialized center was approximately half of those who did not. 

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