Introduction: Elevated left atrial pressures (LAP) are associated with worse outcomes among patients with cardiogenic shock (CS), yet there are limited data on the utility of continuous invasive monitoring of LAPs on outcomes for CS. This is additionally true among refractory CS patients on peripheral VA ECMO, which itself can increase arterial afterload.

Hypothesis: Our objective was to determine whether invasive LAP monitoring impacts survival for patients with refractory CS after 24 hours of VA ECMO support.

Methods: We performed a cohort analysis among 10,906 patients ≥18yrs of age from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO) Registry from 2015 – 2020, with refractory CS treated with VA ECMO. The presence of invasive LAP monitoring was defined as either pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP) or pulmonary arterial diastolic pressure (PAD) values at 24 hours on VA ECMO. The exposure was measurement of LAPs at 24 hours on VA ECMO support, and the primary outcome was 30 day survival. We performed Kaplan Meier survival analysis, adjusting for age, PaO2/FiO2, pH, SCAI classification stage prior to ECMO, presence of a pre-ECMO cardiac arrest, mean arterial blood pressure on ECMO and year.

Results: Median age of patients was 57 [IQR,46; 65] years with 31% females. Thirty two percent (n=3,465) presented with acute myocardial infarction, 29% (n=3,112) with acute heart failure and 1% (n=965) with both etiologies. Invasive LAP monitoring at 24 hours was performed in 33% (n=3608) of patients. The use of invasive LAP was associated with lower mortality (adjusted Hazard Ratio 0.88 [95% CI 0.81 to 0.95]; p=0.002).

Conclusions: Implementation of invasive LAP monitoring may be associated with higher adjusted hospital survival in patients with refractory CS requiring VA-ECMO support. These findings merit further investigation and prospective validation to assess the relationship between invasive hemodynamic monitoring and outcomes in this patient population.