Comparison of Blood and Blood Product Transfusion in COVID-19 and Non-COVID-19 Patients Requiring Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation for Severe Respiratory Failure

COVID-19 has resulted in an exponential increase in patients with severe respiratory failure requiring extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Patients on ECMO regularly require high volumes of blood and blood products but, so far, there has been no comparison of transfusion requirements between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19. Using electronic patient records at two major UK ECMO centres, Royal Papworth Hospital and University Hospital South Manchester, we reviewed the transfusion requirements of patients requiring ECMO between January 2019 to December 2021. A total of 271 patients, including 168 COVID-19 patients were available for analysis. Since COVID-19 patients spent almost twice as long on ECMO (27.1 vs. 14.16 days, ≤ 0.0001) we indexed transfusion in both groups to days on ECMO to allow comparison. COVID-19 patients required less red blood cells (RBC) per day (0.408 vs. 0.996, = 0.0005) but more cryoprecipitate transfusions (0.117 vs. 0.106, = 0.022) compared to non-COVID-19 patients. COVID-19 patients had more than double the mortality of non-COVID-19 patients (47% vs. 20.4%, = 0.0001) and those who died during the study period had higher platelet transfusion requirements ( = 0.007) than their non-COVID-19 counterparts. Transfusion requirements and coagulopathy differ between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients. The distinctly different transfusion patterns between the two groups remain difficult to interpret, but further investigations may help explain the haematological aspects of severe COVID-19 infection.