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Excerpt: We read with great interest the article by Zhang and colleagues: a single-center experience showing that although 48.8% of all extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) patients are successfully decannulated and survive for 30 days or until discharge, 44.5% of patients die while on support or in the following 30 days, and 6.7% are bridged to advanced heart failure therapies.
This study highlights once again the presence of the so-called ECMO gap: the discrepancy between patients who are successfully weaned from ECMO and patients who survive to discharge. This concept has been previously investigated by our groups.