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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.
Today’s tip is about, what are treatment options for ARDS or lung failure? Now the reason I want to bring up this topic is, at the moment a lot of patients in ICU get diagnosed with ARDS or lung failure, especially after they’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19. So what are treatment options for ARDS and lung failure?
Let’s start with common ones like high oxygen delivery from the ventilator, high PEEP, but also things like nitric oxide or prone positioning. Prone positioning basically means you put a patient on the tummy to make sure the lungs can get enough oxygen and can get perfusion and also they can drain secretions that potentially block the lungs, so head down on the tummy and that can drain secretions and basically enable the lungs to get more oxygen.
Next is Epoprostenol nebulizer and that might be a little bit of a contraindication there at the moment because it’s a nebulizer and aerosols should be avoided at the moment because you know, COVID-19 or Coronavirus is a droplet infection and it could get basically onto health professionals and that provides a significant risk obviously.
Next is ECMO, last but not the least is ECMO, if all of those treatment options are failing, ECMO is another option where basically the function of the lungs get bypassed to an ECMO machine and the lungs can recover in there.
That’s my quick tip for today.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com. Like this video, comment down below what questions you have and subscribe to my YouTube channel. If you have a loved one in intensive care and you need help, please check out our website intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website or send us an email to [email protected].
Take care.