Respiratory care
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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) represents the greatest medical crisis encountered in the young history of critical care and respiratory care. During the early months of the pandemic, when little was known about the virus, the acute hypoxemic respiratory failure it caused did not appear to fit conveniently or consistently into our classification of ARDS. This not only re-ignited a half-century's long simmering debate over taxonomy, but also fueled similar debates over how PEEP and lung-protective ventilation should be titrated, as well as the appropriate role of noninvasive ventilation in ARDS. ⋯ With a full year of evidence having been published, this narrative review systematically analyzes whether COVID-19-associated respiratory failure is essentially ARDS, with perhaps a somewhat different course of presentation. This includes a review of the severity of hypoxemia and derangements in pulmonary mechanics, PEEP requirements, recruitment potential, ability to achieve lung-protective ventilation goals, duration of mechanical ventilation, associated mortality, and response to noninvasive ventilation. This paper also reviews the concepts of ARDS phenotypes and patient self-inflicted lung injury as these are crucial to understanding the contentious debate over the nature and management of COVID-19.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Effect of Recruitment Maneuvers and PEEP on Respiratory Failure After Cardiothoracic Surgery in Obese Subjects: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
Obesity may increase the risk of respiratory failure after cardiothoracic surgery. A recruitment maneuver followed by PEEP might decrease the risk of respiratory failure in obese subjects. We hypothesized that the routine use after heart surgery of a recruitment maneuver followed by high or low PEEP level would decrease the frequency of respiratory failure in obese subjects. ⋯ The routine use after heart surgery of a recruitment maneuver followed by 5 or 10 cm H2O of PEEP did not decrease the frequency of respiratory failure in obese subjects. A recruitment maneuver followed by 5 cm H2O of PEEP is inappropriate.
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[Formula: see text] may be a reliable noninvasive alternative to the [Formula: see text] index. Furthermore, the ROX index (ie, the ratio of [Formula: see text] to breathing frequency) has been validated to predict high-flow nasal cannula failure in subjects under spontaneous breathing. However, these indices have not been tested in subjects with COVID-19 receiving invasive mechanical ventilation. This study aims to verify the correlation between both the ROX index and [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] and the ratio of [Formula: see text] to breathing frequency, and to determine the accuracy of the indices that use [Formula: see text] for the prediction of extubation failure in subjects with COVID-19. ⋯ The indices presented a good correlation in subjects with COVID-19 on invasive mechanical ventilation, and both the ROX index and [Formula: see text] can discriminate extubation failure in this population.