ECMO life support offers sickest COVID-19 patients a chance to survive, but a slimmer one than once thought

The life-support system called ECMO can rescue COVID-19 patients from the brink of death, but not at the rates seen early in the pandemic, a new study finds. Where once about 60 percent of such patients survived at least 90 days in spring 2020, by the end of the year it was just under half.