Setting: The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has raised fear throughout the nation. Current news and social media predictions of ventilator, medication, and personnel shortages are rampant.
Patients: Patients with coronavirus disease 2019 are presenting with early respiratory distress and hypoxemia, but not hypercapnia.
Interventions: Patients who maintain adequate alveolar ventilation, normocapnia, and adequate oxygenation may avoid the need for tracheal intubation. Facemask continuous positive airway pressure has been used to treat patients with respiratory distress for decades, including those with severe acute respiratory syndrome. Of importance, protocols were successful in protecting caregivers from contracting the virus, obviating the need for tracheal intubation just to limit the spread of potentially infectious particles.
Conclusions: During a pandemic, with limited resources, we should provide the safest and most effective care, while protecting caregivers. Continuous positive airway pressure titrated to an effective level and applied early with a facemask may spare ventilator usage. Allowing spontaneous ventilation will decrease the need for sedative and paralytic drugs and may decrease the need for highly skilled nurses and respiratory therapists. These goals can be accomplished with devices that are readily available and easier to obtain than mechanical ventilators, which then can be reserved for the sickest patients.
Keywords: continuous positive airway pressure; coronavirus disease 2019; hypoxemia.
Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the Society of Critical Care Medicine.