Mortality Risk Score for Critically Ill Patients with Viral or Unspecified Pneumonia: Assisting Clinicians with COVID-19 ECMO Planning

Helen Zhou, Cheng Cheng, Zachary C. Lipton, George H. Chen, Jeremy C. Weiss

Abstract: Respiratory complications due to coronavirus have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in 2020. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a life-sustaining oxygenation and ventilation therapy that may be used when mechanical ventilation is insufficient. While early planning and surgical cannulation for ECMO can increase survival, clinicians report the lack of a risk score hinders these efforts. We develop the PEER score to highlight critically ill patients with viral or unspecified pneumonia at high risk of mortality in a subpopulation eligible for ECMO. The score is validated across two critical care datasets, and predicts mortality at least as well as other existing risk scores.