In a multinational study using the ELSO Registry, we found that increasing age was strongly associated with higher risk of hospital mortality and complications among patients receiving V-A ECMO for cardiogenic shock, with differences emerging as early as 40 years of age.

Even among relatively younger patients, clinicians should consider the prognostic importance of patient age in decisions surrounding initiation and cessation of V-A ECMO.

We included 15,172 patients receiving V-A ECMO. Of these, 8172 (53.9%) died in hospital.

For the analysis conducted using weakly informed priors, and as compared to the reference category of age 18–29, the age bracket of 30–39 (odds ratio [OR] 0.94, 95% credible interval [CrI] 0.79–1.10) was not associated with hospital mortality, but age brackets 40–49 (odds ratio [OR] 1.26, 95% CrI: 1.08–1.47), 50–59 (OR 1.78, 95% CrI: 1.55–2.06), 60–69 (OR 2.24, 95% CrI: 1.94–2.59), 70–79 (OR 2.90, 95% CrI: 2.49–3.39) and ≥ 80 (OR 4.02, 95% CrI: 3.13–5.20) were independently associated with increasing hospital mortality.

Similar results were found in the analysis conducted with an informative prior, as well as between increasing age and post-ECMO complications.

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