OBJECTIVE To investigate whether prior statin therapy is associated with an improvement in mortality among patients who undergo extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) therapy. DESIGN Retrospective, population-based, cohort study. SETTING Health… Click to show full abstract
OBJECTIVE To investigate whether prior statin therapy is associated with an improvement in mortality among patients who undergo extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) therapy. DESIGN Retrospective, population-based, cohort study. SETTING Health records were obtained from the National Health Insurance Service database in South Korea. PATIENTS All adult patients (≥18 y) who underwent ECMO therapy in the intensive care unit between 2005 and 2018 were enrolled. EXPOSURES Statin users were defined as patients who were prescribed continuous oral statins ≥90 days before ECMO. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS The primary endpoint of this study was 90-day mortality. A total of 21,129 adult patients from 128 hospitals were included (4,737 [22.4%] statin users and 16,392 [77.6%] nonusers). After propensity score matching, 9,474 ECMO patients (4,737 in each group) were included in the final analysis. In the propensity-score-matched cohort, statin users exhibited lower 90-day mortality than did nonusers (58.6% [2,774/4,737] in statin users v 65.6% [3,106/4,737] in nonusers). In addition, on Cox regression, 90-day mortality in statin users was 14% less than that in nonusers (hazard ratio 0.86, 95% confidence interval 0.81-0.90; p < 0.001). CONCLUSION Among patients who underwent ECMO in South Korea, prior statin therapy was found to be associated with lower 90-day mortality rates after ECMO therapy. However, because this study had a retrospective design, future prospective trials are needed to confirm the findings.
               
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