Fig. 1

a Number of COVID-19 autopsy cases and percentage of COVID-19 autopsies after ECMO therapy by postal code of the deceased person (1 value missing of ECMO cases, 17 values missing of non-ECMO cases). b Number of COVID-19 autopsy cases and percentage of COVID-19 autopsies after ECMO therapy by postal code of the contributing center. c Individual disease duration (orange bars) or death date (black boxes, when no data on symptom onset/ first positive SARS-CoV-2 test was available) in N = 63 ECMO COVID-19 autopsy cases. d Age and sex distribution in COVID-19 autopsies after ECMO therapy (N = 63). e Age and sex distribution in COVID-19 autopsies without ECMO therapy (N = 1065, 1 value missing). f Age and sex distribution in COVID-19 autopsies as a percentage of respective age group. g Intracranial bleeding (ICB) and other hemorrhages in ECMO and non-ECMO COVID-19 cases. The associations between the variables ECMO and ICB and ECMO and any bleeding event were significant (both p value < 0.0001 Fisher’s exact test, two-tailed). Note that the number of bleeding events exceeds the number of patients, because in N = 3 non-ECMO, and N = 3 ECMO autopsies, both ICB and other bleeding events were present at the autopsy, respectively. h ECMO cases (violet) and non-ECMO cases (dark yellow) with any bleeding event. The number of extracranial bleeding events is higher compared to h, because, in N = 4 ECMO cases, two different extracranial bleeding events were documented. ICB, intracranial bleeding