ABSTRACT
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) has emerged in the COVID-19 pandemic as a potentially beneficial yet scare resource for treating critically ill patients, with variable allocation across the United States. The existing literature has not addressed barriers patients may face in access to ECMO as a result of healthcare inequity. We present a novel patient-centered framework of ECMO access, providing evidence for potential bias and opportunities to mitigate this bias at every stage between a marginalized patient's initial presentation to treatment with ECMO. While equitable access to ECMO support is a global challenge, this piece focuses primarily on patients in the United States with severe COVID-19-associated ARDS to draw from current literature on VV-ECMO for ARDS and does not address issues that affect ECMO access on a more international scale.
