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Updated: Jun 11, 2025
Point-of-Care Ultrasound for Peripheral Veno-Arterial Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Without Left Ventricular Venting
Published on: January 17, 2025
Hospital variation in post-operative cardiac extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use and relationship to
Marissa A Brunetti1, J William Gaynor2, Wenying Zhang3
1Department of Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia & Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Objective:
It is unclear how extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use varies across paediatric cardiac surgical programmes and how it relates to post-operative mortality. We aimed to determine hospital-level variation in post-operative extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use and its association with case-mix adjusted mortality.
Methods:
Retrospective analysis of 37 hospitals contributing to the Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium clinical registry from 1 August 2014 to 31 December 2019. Hospitalisations including cardiothoracic surgery and post-operative admission to paediatric cardiac ICUs were included. Two-level multivariable logistic regression with hospital random effect was used to determine case-mix adjusted post-operative extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use rates and in-hospital mortality. Hospitals were grouped into extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use tertiles, and mortality was compared across tertiles.
Results:
There were 43,640 eligible surgical hospitalisations; 1397 (3.2%) included at least one post-operative extracorporeal membrane oxygenation run. Case-mix adjusted extracorporeal membrane oxygenation rates varied more than sevenfold (0.9-6.9%) across hospitals, and adjusted mortality varied 10-fold (0-5.5%). Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation rates were 2.0%, 3.5%, and 5.2%, respectively, for low, middle, and high extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use tertiles (P < 0.0001), and mortality rates were 1.9%, 3.0%, and 3.1% (p < 0.0001), respectively. High extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use hospitals were more likely to initiate extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support intraoperatively (1.6% vs. 0.6% low and 1.1% middle, p < 0.0001). Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation indications were similar across hospital tertiles. When extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation was excluded, variation in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use rates persisted (1.5%, 2.6%, 3.8%, p < 0.001).
Conclusions:
There is hospital variation in adjusted post-operative extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use after paediatric cardiac surgery and a significant association with adjusted post-operative mortality. These findings suggest that post-operative extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use could be a complementary quality metric to mortality to assess performance of cardiac surgical programmes.
