COVID-19 patients who required life-support late in 2020 were significantly more likely to die within 90 days than those who were placed on it during the pandemic's first wave, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor found a sharp decrease in survival rates of patients placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a system used for patients in critical patients and assists in the circulation of blood.
They found patients placed on ECMO early in the pandemic survived for at least 90 days in 63 percent of circumstances.
Later on, however, the survival rate cratered by 40 percent, with less than half of those placed on ECMO from May to December 2020 surviving 90 days.
The researchers believe the sharp increase in deaths due to poor resource management with ECMO.
Researchers found that patients placed on ECMO early in the pandemic (blue line) had significantly lower 90-day mortality rates than those placed on life-support afterwards (green and red lines)
Researchers believe hospitals could have managed resources better in the second half of 2020, avoiding using valuable resources on patients that were going to die anyways. Pictured: a physician assists a Covid patient in a Farmington Hills, Michigan, hospital on December 17
'What we noticed right away is that the patients treated later in the pandemic were staying on ECMO longer, going from an average of 14 days to 20 days,' said Dr Ryan Barbaro, co-first author of the study and intensive care physician at Michigan Medicine, in a statement.
'They were dying more often, and these deaths were different
'This shows that we need to be thoughtful about who we're putting on ECMO and when we're making the decision to take patients off who aren't getting better. Across the U.S. right now, we have places where ECMO is a scarce resource.'
For the study, published late last month in The Lancet, data was gathered from 4,800 patients from 41 countries.
The patients were separated into
