Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation in Children with Coronavirus Disease 2019: Preliminary Report from the Collaborative European Chapter of the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization Prospective Survey

Since the declaration of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, a small percentage of children with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection have required intensive care unit (ICU) admission with an even smaller percentage needing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support. To provide contemporaneous data on ECMO utilization and activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Chapter of the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (EuroELSO) established a prospective survey among European neonatal and pediatric centers from the 15th of March to the end of June 2020. The survey was approved by the Maastricht University Medical Centre Ethics Committee. Centers reported anonymized data weekly through the EuroELSO website (www.euroelso.org). We report the preliminary data from 52 neonatal and pediatric ECMO centers across Europe during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. [...]