• Amelie Zitzmann, Sven Pulletz, Pablo Gonzales-Rios, Paul Frenkel, Peter Teschendorf, Peter Kremeier, Benjamin Löser, Lisa Krukewitt, Daniel A Reuter, Stephan H Böhm, and Fabian Müller-Graf.
• Department of Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care Medicine and Pain Therapy, University Medical Centre Rostock, Rostock, Germany.
• Acta Anaesthesiol Scand. 2023 Feb 1; 67 (2): 185194185-194.

BackgroundGravity-dependent positioning therapy is an established concept in the treatment of severe acute respiratory distress syndrome and improves oxygenation in spontaneously breathing patients with hypoxemic acute respiratory failure. In patients with coronavirus disease 2019, this therapy seems to be less effective. Electrical impedance tomography as a point-of-care functional imaging modality for visualizing regional ventilation can possibly help identify patients who might benefit from positioning therapy and guide those maneuvers in real-time. Therefore, in this prospective observational study, we aimed to discover typical patterns in response to positioning maneuvers.MethodsDistribution of ventilation in 10 healthy volunteers and in 12 patients with hypoxemic respiratory failure due to coronavirus disease 2019 was measured in supine, left, and right lateral positions using electrical impedance tomography.ResultsIn this study, patients with coronavirus disease 2019 showed a variety of ventilation patterns, which were not predictable, whereas all but one healthy volunteer showed a typical and expected gravity-dependent distribution of ventilation with the body positions.ConclusionDistribution of ventilation and response to lateral positioning is variable and thus unpredictable in spontaneously breathing patients with coronavirus disease 2019. Electrical impedance tomography might add useful information on the immediate reaction to postural maneuvers and should be elucidated further in clinical studies. Therefore, we suggest a customized individualized positioning therapy guided by electrical impedance tomography.© 2022 The Authors. Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica Foundation.

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