Inter-institutional analysis of the outcome after postcardiotomy veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation
Fausto Biancari, Timo Mäkikallio, Antonio Loforte, Alexander Kaserer, Vito G Ruggieri, Sung-Min Cho, Jin Kook Kang, Magnus Dalén, Henryk Welp, Kristján Jónsson, Sigurdur Ragnarsson, Francisco J Hernández Pérez, Giuseppe Gatti, Khalid Alkhamees, Antonio Fiore, Andrea Lechiancole, Stefano Rosato, Cristiano Spadaccio, Matteo Pettinari, Andrea Perrotti, Sebastian D Sahli, Camilla L’Acqua, Amr A Arafat, Monirah A Albabtain, Mohammed M AlBarak, Mohamed Laimoud, Ilija Djordjevic, Ihor Krasivskyi, Robertas Samalavicius, Agne Jankuviene, Marta Alonso-Fernandez-Gatta, Markus J Wilhelm, Tatu Juvonen, Giovanni Mariscalco- Biomedical Engineering
- Biomaterials
- General Medicine
- Medicine (miscellaneous)
- Bioengineering
Introduction:
Patients requiring postcardiotomy veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (V-A-ECMO) have a high risk of early mortality. In this analysis, we evaluated whether any interinstitutional difference exists in the results of postcardiotomy V-A-ECMO.
Methods:
Studies on postcardiotomy V-A-ECMO were identified through a systematic review for individual patient data (IPD) meta-analysis. Analysis of interinstitutional results was performed using direct standardization, estimation of observed/expected in-hospital mortality ratio and propensity score matching.
Results:
Systematic review of the literature yielded 31 studies. Data from 10 studies on 1269 patients treated at 25 hospitals were available for the present analysis. In-hospital mortality was 66.7%. The relative risk of in-hospital mortality was significantly higher in six hospitals. Observed versus expected in-hospital mortality ratio showed that four hospitals were outliers with significantly increased mortality rates, and one hospital had significantly lower in-hospital mortality rate. Participating hospitals were classified as underperforming and overperforming hospitals if their observed/expected in-hospital mortality was higher or lower than 1.0, respectively. Among 395 propensity score matched pairs, the overperforming hospitals had significantly lower in-hospital mortality (60.3% vs 71.4%, p = 0.001) than underperforming hospitals. Low annual volume of postcardiotomy V-A-ECMO tended to be predictive of poor outcome only when adjusted for patients’ risk profile.
Conclusions:
In-hospital mortality after postcardiotomy V-A-ECMO differed significantly between participating hospitals. These findings suggest that in many centers there is room for improvement of the results of postcardiotomy V-A-ECMO.