Clinical Outcomes With Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation for Interstitial Lung Disease: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The evidence on indications, outcomes, and complications with the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in the setting of interstitial lung disease (ILD) is limited in the existing literature. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis for the use of ECMO in the setting of ILD to study the prognostic factors associated with in-hospital mortality. Eighteen unique studies with a total of 1,356 patients on ECMO for ILD were identified out of which 76.5% were on ECMO as a bridge to transplant (BTT) and the rest as a bridge to recovery (BTR). The overall in-hospital mortality was 45.76%, with 71.3% and 37.8% for BTR and BTT, respectively. Among the various prognostic factors, mortality was lower with younger age (mean difference = 3.15, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.82-5.49), use of awake veno-arterial (VA)-ECMO compared to veno-venous (VV)-ECMO (unadjusted odds ratio [OR] = 0.22, 95% CI = 0.13-0.37) in the overall cohort. In the setting of BTT, the use of VA-ECMO had a decreased hazard ratio (HR) compared to VV-ECMO (adjusted HR = 0.34, 95% CI = 0.15-0.81, p = 0.015). The findings of our meta-analysis are critical but are derived from retrospective studies with small sample sizes and thus are of low to very low-GRADE certainty.