Complications, Quality of Life and Costs of Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation

Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) is a treatment applied to patients in the intensive care unit whose heart and/or lungs are malfunctioning due to illness or surgery and are insufficiently supported by medication and conventional mechanical ventilation alone. Unfortunately, complications often arise in these critically ill patients. In ECMO, the specific complications mainly consist of bleeding. About half of ECMO patients die.
It has been found that bleeding occurred in almost half of the patients. The majority of the bleeding originated from the surgical site or the canulation site. The thinner the blood due to the blood thinners (heparin) given, the greater the chance of bleeding.
Quality of life after ECMO treatment, measured after 1 year, appeared to be more or less equal to the Dutch population (same sex and age). Also in a specific group of patients after lung transplantation.
Costs of hospital treatment with ECMO depends on the underlying disease. An average hospitalization in which ECMO took place costs €106,263 (price level 2013). More than half of the total hospital costs arise from hospital nursing days. We also measured the costs in the first year, which turned out to be an average of €162,793 (price level 2019), largely determined by the hospital costs. So at a high cost in the first year ECMO delivers a very acceptable quality of life.