Pneumonia patients with COVID-19 who required extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) fared worse than those without COVID-19, according to a study that looked at six years of patient data.

After the study, published in the American Journal of Critical Care (AJCC), accounted for age, sociodemographic factors and comorbidities, it found that COVID-19 patients who underwent ECMO were more likely to die or have longer hospital stays and were more likely to be discharged somewhere other than home. The analysis included 5,680 pneumonia patients with COVID-19 who underwent ECMO and 430 non-COVID-19 pneumonia patients similarly treated. These were among the more than 3 million adults admitted to the hospital with pneumonia between 2016 and 2021.

“The increased risk of mortality cannot be solely attributed to factors like age or underlying comorbidities, but rather is related to factors directly associated with COVID-19,” said co-author Francisco J. Gallegos-Koyner, MD, a resident physician at SBH Health System.

The study also showed how the use of ECMO has increased since the pandemic. For example, the number of COVID-19 pneumonia patients treated with ECMO in 2020 and 2021 was higher than all of the non-COVID-19 patients who underwent ECMO from 2016 through 2021.