Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a life-threatening condition affecting >10% of intensive care unit (ICU) patients worldwide with a mortality of up to 59% depending on severity. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a potentially life-saving procedure in severe ARDS but is technically and financially challenging. In recent years, various scoring systems have been proposed to select patients most likely to benefit from ECMO, with the PREdiction of Survival on ECMO Therapy (PRESET) score being one of the most used. We collected data from 283 patients with ARDS of various etiology who underwent veno-venous (V-V) ECMO therapy at a German tertiary care ICU from January 2012 to December 2022. Median age in the cohort was 56 years, and 64.31% were males. The in-hospital mortality rate was 50.88% (n = 144). The median (25%; 75% quartile) severity scores were 38 (31; 49) for Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS) II, 12 (10; 13) for Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) and 7 (5; 8) for PRESET. Simplified Acute Physiology Score-II displayed the best prognostic value (area under the receiver operating characteristic [AUROC]: 0.665 [confidence interval (CI): 0.574-0.756; p = 0.046]). Prediction performance was weak in all analyzed scores despite good calibration. Simplified Acute Physiology Score-II had the best discrimination after adjustment of our original cohort. The use of scores explored in this study for patient selection for eligibility for V-V ECMO is not recommendable.
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