Contributor: Aaron Lessen, MD

Educational Pearls:

• Meta-analysis of 57,420 COVID+ patients evaluated mortality after intubation
• • 45% mortality rate for all patients in the study
  • 84.4% mortality in patients over 80 years old
• POSITIONED Trail assessed need for intubation in patients awake self-proning compared to not
• • Risk of intubation and mortality was lower for those self-proning
  • 0.3 hazard ratio for intubation in those self-proning

References

Lim ZJ, Subramaniam A, Ponnapa Reddy M, et al. Case Fatality Rates for Patients with COVID-19 Requiring Invasive Mechanical Ventilation. A Meta-analysis. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2021;203(1):54-66. doi:10.1164/rccm.202006-2405OC

Jagan N, Morrow LE, Walters RW, Klein LP, Wallen TJ, Chung J, Plambeck RW. The POSITIONED Study: Prone Positioning in Nonventilated Coronavirus Disease 2019 Patients-A Retrospective Analysis. Crit Care Explor. 2020 Oct 1;2(10):e0229. doi: 10.1097/CCE.0000000000000229. PMID: 33063033; PMCID: PMC7531752.

Summarized by John Spartz, MS3 | Edited by Erik Verzemnieks, MD