Bleeding and Thrombotic Issues during Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation.

Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) is an advanced life support modality for patients with respiratory or cardiac failure refractory to standard therapy. Of interest, patients with bleeding events had lower values of C-reactive protein and procalcitonin, whereas coagulation parameters were the same of non-bleeding patients, with the only exception of a higher antithrombin value. There is no general agreement on the need for a more pronounced systemic anticoagulation in COVID-19 ECMO patients; however, evidence exists that these patients may be at higher risk for thrombotic complications. During the ECMO course, COVID-19 patients had thrombotic complications in 40% of the cases vs. 13% in influenza patients ( I p i = 0.001) and bleeding occurred in 96% of the COVID-19 patients vs. 77% in the influenza cohort ( I p i = 0.004). [Extracted from the article]