You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 75, Issue 11
  • High-flow nasal cannula oxygen therapy to treat patients with hypoxemic acute respiratory failure consequent to SARS-CoV-2 infection

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Brief communication
High-flow nasal cannula oxygen therapy to treat patients with hypoxemic acute respiratory failure consequent to SARS-CoV-2 infection
Free
  1. Andrea Vianello1,
  2. Giovanna Arcaro2,
  3. Beatrice Molena2,
  4. Cristian Turato3,
  5. Andi Sukthi2,
  6. Gabriella Guarnieri2,
  7. Francesca Lugato2,
  8. Gianenrico Senna4,
  9. Paolo Navalesi5
  1. 1 Department of Cardiac, Thoracic, Vascular Sciences and Public Health, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
  2. 2 Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences, University-City Hospital of Padova, Padova, Italy
  3. 3 Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
  4. 4 Department of Medicine, University of Verona, Verona, Italy
  5. 5 Department of Medicine DIMED, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
  1. Correspondence to Professor Andrea Vianello, -, Padova 35128, Italy; andrea.vianello{at}aopd.veneto.it

Abstract

This observational study aims to assess the outcome and safety of O2-therapy by high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) in 28 consecutive patients with severe hypoxemic acute respiratory failure (hARF) consequent to SARS-CoV-2 infection, unresponsive to conventional O2-therapy. Nineteen patients had a positive response. Nine patients required escalation of treatment to non-invasive ventilation (five subsequently intubated). None of the staff had a positive swab testing during the study period and the following 14 days. Severity of hypoxemia and C reactive protein level were correlated with HFNC failure. These data suggest HFNC to be a safe treatment for less severe patients with SARS-CoV-2 hARF and efficacy will need to be assessed as part of a clinical trial.

  • critical care
  • viral infection
  • respiratory infection
  • non invasive ventilation

This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ’s website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.

https://bmj.com/coronavirus/usage

https://doi.org/10.1136/thoraxjnl-2020-214993

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors AV: study design, manuscript preparation. BM: data collection and analysis. CT: data collection and analysis. GA: data collection, conduction of the study. AS: conduction of the study. GG: data collection, conduction of the study. FL: data collection, conduction of the study. GS: study design, data analysis. PN: manuscript preparation, revision of the paper.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.