Denver-based University of Colorado researchers found that gender and income influence might influence who receives advanced pulmonary support.
Men, those with health insurance and those with higher incomes were more likely to receive extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, researchers found. The study, published April 5 in Annals of the American Thoracic Society, used health insurance data from more than 2 million adults who had severe respiratory illness between 2016 and 2019. All the patients first received mechanical ventilation.
More than 18,700 also received ECMO — a machine that pumps blood out of the body through devices that feed it oxygen, then returns it — following mechanical ventilation.
Here are three study findings:
- Men received ECMO more often than women (64 percent vs. 36 percent), even when they had the same type of insurance and income level.
- Of those who received ECMO, about 38 percent had private insurance, 37 percent had Medicare, roughly 18 percent had Medicaid and 7 percent had other insurance or possibly no insurance.
- About 25 percent of those who received ECMO were from higher income areas while 25 percent were from low-income areas.
The findings are associations and do not necessarily mean physicians intentionally refer some patients over others for advanced care, study author Anuj Mehta, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at University of Colorado School of Medicine, told U.S. News & World Report.