A new setting: Cardiorespiratory arrest (PCR) and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in COVID19

Abstract

Our country, like the rest of the world, have been facing for a little more than three months, a pandemia caused by a new virus called "SARS-CoV-2", which spread started in Wuhan, China. As this virus has crossed all geographic boundaries, so has done with those related to human wellbeing. We have faced social, economic, epidemiologic, organizational, biologic and clinic challenges. The COVID-19, which is the name the World Health Organization (WHO) gave to the disease caused by this virus, uses to show clinical manifestations similar to those caused by a common flu in the vast majority of cases. Although there is a low percentage of patients who developed a severe clinical profile, that makes necessary an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission. This virus has the particular feature of being highly transmissible from one person to another by direct contact, droplets and aerosols generation. This has led the number of infected all around the world to grow in an exponential manner, which remains a real hazard for the available resources needed for personal and community protection. The natural questions that arise from this landscape are: what must be done if a COVID+ or suspected, presents a cardiac arrest (CA) and need cardiopulmonary reanimation (CPR)? Should RCP be started considering the patient prognosis and the resources shortage? It seems worthy to take the risk of becoming infected? Am I really at risk of becoming infected if I participate in performing the CPR maneuvers? Do I have to perform the RCP maneuvers following the International Liaison Committee On Reanimation (ILCOR) guides that I already know or there are some differences? And what I am supposed to do if the CA occurs while the patient is in the prone position? This revision tries to find some of the answers for those questions, based on current publications and published recommendations so far. Certainly, those are scarce in this field and are subject to changes, at least for some months, while the scientific and medical community achieve the consolidated knowledge about the global clinic behavior of this new disease, COVID-19.