Critically ill patients who require extracorporeal membrane oxygenation have poor long-term outcomes, with only one in three still alive and free of disability six months later, research shows.

And among these survivors, new disability across all areas of functioning is common, according to the first study globally to describe these outcomes.

Overall, the rate of disability-free survival following extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in 23 ICUs across the country in 2019-20 was just 34%, report investigators led by the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre at Monash University in Melbourne.

“[This] points to the need for long-term, multidisciplinary care and support for surviving patients who have had ECMO,” they wrote in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.