Posición prono en pacientes con síndrome de insuficiencia respiratoria progresiva aguda por COVID-19

Abstract

Approximately, up to 5% of the patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) need to be treated in the Critical Care Unit. Of all these patients, up to 71% will develop Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). The technique of placing the patients in prone position has had good results in patients with refractory hypoxemia secondary to severe ARDS. The American and European guidelines recommend the use of prone position to improve sever hypoxemia of COVID-19 patients. It is a low cost technique that could improve the outcome in this patients. We present the results of 5 of our first patients with COVID-19 using prone position concluding that at least, in this first sample, there is a good response with improvement of hypoxemia as well as improvement in the chest X-ray images but we cannot conclude if it has an impact in the outcome of the patient, defined as survival or days in mechanical ventilation. Keywords: Prone position, coronavirus, acute respiratory distress syndrome