Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation meta-analysis of time-to-event data in respiratory failure in adults v1

Purpose:Time-to-event data of hazard ratios were used to generate a forest plot of mortality on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in respiratory failure in adults. Materials and Methods:A systemic search was conducted in PubMed from 1975 to 2018. Among 4,121 articles, a total of 5 clinical reports comprising 1,014patients (333 of the patients who underwent ECMO and 681 of the patients who did not undergo ECMO) met the inclusion criteria. Results:The pooled hazard ratio of 0.64 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.54, 0.76) suggests that the ECMO group comprising both veno-arterial (VA) type and a majority of veno-venous (VV) type was significantly associated with a reduction in mortality compared with the non-ECMO group in respiratory failure. The results of VV-ECMO alone also showed significantly improved patient survival of respiratory failure with the hazard ratio of 0.67 (0.56, 0.81). Conclusions:The results of the ECMO group with VV and VA types, or the VV type alone revealed a reduction in mortality for patients with respiratory failure based on time-to-event data.Future investigation of the efficacy of VA-ECMO alone in respiratory failure may be more enlightening.