{"doi":"10.12659/aot.946088","title":"Lung Transplant Success in COVID-19 Patients Requiring V-V ECMO: One-Year Follow-Up","abstract":"BACKGROUND Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) due to coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) can result in severe disease requiring mechanical ventilatory support. A subset of these patients, however, demonstrate refractory hypoxemia/hypercarbia requiring veno-venous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (V-V ECMO) as adjunctive therapy. The primary goal of V-V ECMO is a \"bridge\" to recovery of native lung function; however, patients may progress to irreversible pulmonary damage requiring lung transplantation. MATERIAL AND METHODS We conducted a retrospective review of patients with refractory COVID-19 ARDS/pulmonary fibrosis that required a V-V ECMO bridge to lung transplantation at our institution from May 2021 to December 2022. Data for analysis included patient demographics, pre/post-transplantation course, and 1-year outcomes. RESULTS Nine patients (6 male, 3 female) with an average age of 44.6±12.1 years required V-V ECMO support for COVID-19 and subsequently underwent lung transplantation. The median number of ECMO days was 57 (IQR 53-78). At listing, these patients had a median lung allocation score (LAS) of 91.86 (IQR 89.05-92.13). The median hospital length-of-stay was 89 days (IQR 54-144) with the longest hospital stay at 255 days. All patients were discharged home and survived to 1-year post-transplant. CONCLUSIONS Our case series shows that patients with COVID-19 ARDS/pulmonary fibrosis had no meaningful difference in overall survival compared to our institution's overall 1-year lung transplant survival rate. Our results suggest that with careful selection and care, long-term lung transplantation outcomes can be equivalent for those requiring a bridge to transplantation with V-V ECMO support despite the severity of illness in the peri-transplant period.","journal":"Annals of Transplantation","year":2024,"id":472756,"datarank":0.16479184330021646,"base_score":1.0986122886681096,"endowment":1.0986122886681096,"self_citation_contribution":0.16479184330021646,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.16479184330021646,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9592,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":447839,"name":"Travis Pollema","orcid":"0009-0006-4987-0455","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":442382,"name":"Christine M. Lin","orcid":"0000-0001-5893-797X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":270457,"name":"Robert L. Owens","orcid":"0000-0002-6515-6204","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":701817,"name":"Cassia Yi","orcid":"0000-0003-1522-3066","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1308237,"name":"Shannon LeBlanc","orcid":"0000-0002-3396-9454","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1308658,"name":"Chelsea Roche","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1308659,"name":"Catherine Gaissert","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":875178,"name":"Gordon Yung","orcid":"0000-0002-4241-029X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1308238,"name":"Aarya Kafi","orcid":"0000-0003-4748-2521","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":704522,"name":"Eugene Golts","orcid":"0000-0002-6289-5773","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":875177,"name":"Kamyar Afshar","orcid":"0000-0002-7574-0738","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":702744,"name":"Mazen Odish","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":26,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:05:57.032095Z","pmid":"39716460","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}