Mechanical Circulatory Support in COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted almost all aspects of modern health care, including increased mortality rates for classi-cally described disease processes. For patients with underlying cardiac disease, concomitant COVID-19 infection significantly increases morbidity and mortality and may precipitate condi-tions such as CS. Although randomized controlled data are sorely lacking, retrospective evidence shows that patients with COVID-19 and CS are sicker and are more likely to die compared with traditional controls. Similarly, COVID-19 patients with isolated respiratory failure and ARDS seem to have increased challenges compared with his-torical outcomes. The application of MCS to this patient population remains technically complex and resource intensive, carrying with it a signifi-cant mortality rate. Although the scientific commu-nity awaits more evidence-based practice guidelines for MCS for COVID-19 patients, the ne-cessity of a thoughtful, multidisciplinary team approach to these challenging cases at high -volume, experienced centers remains of the utmost importance.