• Richard D Branson and Dario Rodriquez.
• Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma & Critical Care, University of Cincinnati, 231 Albert Sabin Way, Cincinnati, Ohio. branson@aarc.org.
• Respir Care. 2021 Jul 1; 66 (7): 117311831173-1183.

AbstractCOVID-19 resulting from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has resulted in a pandemic of respiratory failure previously unencountered. Early in the pandemic, concentrated infections in high-density population cities threatened to overwhelm health systems, and ventilator shortages were predicted. An early proposed solution was the use of shared ventilation, or the use of a single ventilator to support ≥ 2 patients. Spurred by ill-conceived social media posts, the idea spread in the lay press. Prior to 2020, there were 7 publications on this topic. A year later, more than 40 publications have addressed the technical details for shared ventilation, clinical experience with shared ventilation, as well as the numerous limitations and ethics of the technique. This is a review of the literature regarding shared ventilation from peer-reviewed articles published in 2020.Copyright © 2021 by Daedalus Enterprises.

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