Proning patients on NIV or HFNC

Disclaimer: I am a consultant for a company mentioned in this paper but I am not being compensated in any way, shape or form for this post.

People have asked if it is safe to prone patients who are in ARDS and use either non-invasive ventilation or high flow nasal cannula. In this paper, which is completely FREE for you to download looked at 20 patients who were in ARDS (causes listed on the paper). This was not a randomized trial. It was an observational cohort. They included patients with with moderate ARDS per the Berlin Criteria.

Important teaching point is the Berlin Criteria for ARDS (PaO2/FiO2)
Mild P/F 200-300
Moderate P/F ≤200
Severe: P/F ≤100

Also important to know that moderate ARDS has a mortality of 32% and severe ARDS has a 45% mortality.

55% of patients avoided intubation (it's a small study). But when you consider the fact that these patients with COVID generally stay on the vent for more than 10 days anecdotally, require significant sedation and perhaps paralytics, and eventually move on to be trached, it may be worth consideration. 3 of the 9 patients who were intubated moved on to needing ECMO.

The short answer without me giving away any bias for the aforementioned reasons is that it could be done. The data supporting it is in this article. No, it is not a magic bullet. Not everyone will dodge the endotracheal tube. But one could start asking their patients to do this even in their Emergency Department.

Also, I cannot comment on the concern of aerosolization of the virus by NIV or HFNC at this juncture. I honestly don't know the answer. What I do know is that we may run out of vents if we intubate everyone early. Always wear as much PPE as you can reasonably get your hands on.

Ding L, Wang L, Ma W, He H. Efficacy and safety of early prone positioning combined with HFNC or NIV in moderate to severe ARDS: a multi-center prospective cohort study. Crit Care. 2020;24(1):28. Published 2020 Jan 30. doi:10.1186/s13054-020-2738-5

-EJ
Link to Abstract

Link to PDF

Link to Berlin Criteria

BiPAP should not be used in Immunocompromised patients

This was a post-hoc analysis of the FLORALI trial that I have reviewed before on this medium. In that study they compared patients who had hypoxemic respiratory failure by putting them on 1:1:1 on high flow nasal cannula (HFNC), standard oxygen therapy, and non-invasive ventilation (NIV aka BiPAP).

My interest was piqued in trying to find out what they defined as immunocompromised patients. They looked at patient with hematologic and solid malignancies, AIDS, drug induced, and steroid related. The etiology for the respiratory failure in these patients was mostly for pneumonia, whether opportunistic etiology or not.

To make it simple, they found that patients treated wit HFNC did better than patients who received NIV regarding rates of intubation as well as mortality.

Frat J-P, Ragot S, Girault C, et al. Effect of non-invasive oxygenation strategies in immunocompromised patients with severe acute respiratory failure: a post-hoc analysis of a randomised trial. Lancet Respir Med 2016;4:646–52.

Link to Abstract

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High Flow Nasal Cannula in Acute Decompensated Heart Failure data leaves much to be desired.

Fortunately in the critical ill population, we do not necessarily have to abide by the saying that "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". What I'm referring to is regarding utilizing high-flow nasal cannula in acute heart failure exacerbations. I already dissected how HFNC generated a "PEEP" equivalent airway pressure and the data behind that statement. The amount of PEEP varies and it drops by a statistically significant difference if the patient has their mouth open. If a patient presents to the emergency department, or someone gets overzealous with maintenance fluids, with an acute heart failure exacerbation, there is data that I will be reviewing here where HFNC is an option. But let's be honest with ourselves, though, non-invasive ventilation (colloquially known as BiPAP, although CPAP has data for working as well) is the better option because it provides positive airway pressure more reliably that HFNC. Sometimes these patients just need the ventilator as well. All three studies are FREE that I am going to be reviewing here and I recommend you read them for yourself rather than trusting my takedown of them. That's your disclaimer.

The first study published in 2011 out of Spain was a look at just 5 patients. I know, don't fall off of your seat. I can't criticize because I don't do any research outside of read other peoples research. One needs to remember that in 2011 the HFNC systems were not readily available for historical context. These 5 patients were treated in the emergency department with NIV and then I guess they were diuresed aggressively there. Why do I guess? Well the study does not report the BNP nor the achieved diuresis in these 5 patients. Big weakness in the study. They looked at a multitude of parameters that would be standard for a study of this nature, i.e. to see if HFNC is better than the other oxygen devices, but there are big problems. You see, the authors looked at the parameters before HFNC and then 24 hours AFTER HFNC. What they don't say is how much the patients were diuresed in the interim. Of course the PaO2 is going to improve. Of course the dyspnea is going to improve. Of course the respiratory rate is going to improve! Anyway, this is a study worth sticking in our back pockets to know it happened and move forward.

The second study by Roca also out of Spain in 2013 wanted to assess if HFNC helped with the hemodynamic parameters. They hypothesized that HFNC in patients with heart failure could be associated with a decrease in preload without changing the cardiac output. To look at this, patients got sequential echo's to assess cardiac function. Pretty good setup if you ask me. The 10 patients enrolled in this study were all stable. Therefore the data needs to be extrapolated to the sick patients. They did a baseline TTE on these patients, then hooked them up to the HFNC system at 20L, checked an echo, then at 40L of flow, and checked an echo. They did all sort of echocardiographic wizardry to obtain their results. They found that HFNC may be associated with a decrease in preload justified by the lack of IVC collapse on inspiration without any changes to cardiac function. IVC measurements are their own can of worms when used for resuscitation but this is very standardized and methodical. The most interesting finding that I enjoyed was the decrease in respiratory rate noted by these patients. At baseline, their RR was 23 breaths per minute. At 20L this fell to 17 bpm. At 40L this fell to 13 bpm. Cool stuff! Note that the patients were receiving just flow in this study as the FiO2 was set to 21% (room air). The authors chose to not use patients in acute decompensated heart failure for this study as there would have been too much variability in the subjects themselves along with their responses to the treatments interfering with to the measures. Obviously if they dump out a liter due to furosemide their hemodynamic parameters are going to change and it'll mask out the effect of the HFNC or provide confounders.

The third and last study I'm going to share with you all today comes from our colleagues in South Korea who performed a retrospective cohort analysis where patients were divided into a HFNC group or an intubation group after oxygenation with a facemask at a flow rate of 10L/min or more. These authors jumped on the opportunity to look at this data as they hadn't seen any published data about using HFNC in patients with acute heart failure exacerbations. They looked at approximately 5 years of data to place 73 patients in the intubation group and 76 patients in the HFNC group. Since this was a retrospective study, the decision as to what arm the patients fell in was at the discretion of the physician at bedside. The authors are just looking back in time at why they decided to do it and how the patients did. It seems as if they ignored the NIV data. I could be wrong. The baseline characteristics of the two arms were similar with nothing too eye catching. These patients were looked at for 6 hours. There were no statistically significant changes in the physiologic responses between the two groups. There was also no difference in the clinical outcomes between the two groups. This oddly, in my opinion, includes vasopressor/ionotrope use. I mention this because patients who are intubated typically have sedation. Also, the medications utilized for intubation could have an effect on hemodynamic parameters that are not noted here. It's just something that, from a personal experience standpoint, has me a bit curious. The p-value for that is 0.051. If the sample size would've been larger, I'm sure that would've been a notable difference. The authors noted all these limitations to their study and agree that what we really need is a prospective, multicentered, randomized, controlled trial. I agree

To conclude, I think the best we have right now in the absence of concrete data is clinical judgment, my favorite. One could try to place the patient on HFNC to either keep them away from the ventilator or even keep them from being annoyed by the CPAP/BiPAP mask which is typically uncomfortable, limits the ability to eat, speak, and other fun activities. If it fails, it fails. Your RT may be a little annoyed at you and may say "I told you so", but ultimately we have to do what's best for the patient. Thoughts? Please read these articles for yourself. A hat tip to all the authors. 

- EJ





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Link to Abstract

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Do Not Resuscitate/Do Not Intubate does NOT mean Do Not Do Anything.

Nasal high flow oxygen therapy in do-not-intubate patients with hypoxemic respiratory distress

This topic is very dear to me because I am a huuuuuuuge proponent for appropriate end of life care. I'm an Intensivist after all and people unfortunately die on my service. We all are going to have our day. My goal with the patients I take care of is to make their passing to the next life as comfortable as possible with as much love surrounding the individual as humanly possible. It irks me at times when clinicians write patients off just because they have a DNR/DNI order written. For the non-medical people around here that means do not resuscitate/do not intubate. Also, what are you doing around here? Those patients also need our best efforts as they are already cognizant of their impending mortality. That usually means their friends and family members are also aware and would rather be around when the inevitable to all of us occurs and they pass. In this article, the authors attempted to avoid utilizing non-invasive ventilation, or as most of us just call it, BiPAP, by placing patients on high flow nasal cannula. Small study, 50 patients. Can you imagine the difficulty in enrolling patients into a study like this? It must have been quite challenging. In short, although mortality in hospital was appropriately high, they found that they were able to avoid placing patients on BiPAP in 82% of patients. To me, this is particularly important because that means these patients were able to comfort eat, speak to their families, say their goodbyes, give them unobstructed hugs (due to the BiPAP mask), kisses, and smiles without a NIV mask in the way. The decreased RR as a clinician to me is significant because if there's one thing that makes me uncomfortable, it's a patient who is in frank respiratory distress sucking wind to survive. A respiratory rate decrease from 30.6 to 24.7 is something I'd take any day. This is something I do in my practice. I was very happy to run into their article and find some data to support what I anecdotally believed.

A hat tip to the authors.

-EJ

Peters S, Holets S, Gay P. Nasal high flow oxygen therapy in do-not-intubate patients with hypoxemic respiratory distress. Respir Care. 2013 ; 58(4): 597-600.

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Noninvasive positive pressure ventilation in respiratory failure: the guidelines

Official ERS/ATS clinical practice guidelines: noninvasive ventilation for acute respiratory failure.
Want to know which patients to use BiPAP on? This guideline published in the American Thoracic Society journal in conjunction with the European Respiratory Society in 2017 provides some good answers for the most common questions we all encounter in our daily practice.
Should NIV be used in COPD exacerbation?
Should NIV be used in ARF due to a COPD exacerbation to prevent the development of respiratory acidosis?
Should NIV be used in established acute hypercapnic respiratory failure due to a COPD exacerbation?
Should NIV be used in ARF due to cardiogenic pulmonary oedema?
Should NIV be used in ARF due to acute asthma?
Should NIV be used for ARF in immunocompromised patients?
Should NIV be used in de novo ARF?
Should NIV be used in ARF in the post-operative setting?
Should NIV be used in patients with ARF receiving palliative care?
Should NIV be used in ARF due to chest trauma?
Should NIV be used to prevent respiratory failure post-extubation?
Should NIV be used in the treatment of respiratory failure that develops post-extubation?
Should NIV be used to facilitate weaning patients from invasive mechanical ventilation?
Fortunately, this article is free for you to download. The link is below.





Link to FREE article

Rochwerg B, Brochard L, Elliott MW, et al. Official ERS/ATS clinical practice guidelines: noninvasive ventilation for acute respiratory failure. Eur Respir J 2017; 50: 1602426

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HFNC/High Flow Nasal Cannual vs. Conventional Oxygen Therapy vs. Non-Invasive Positive Pressure Ventilation

Can High-flow Nasal Cannula Reduce the Rate of Endotracheal Intubation in Adult Patients With Acute Respiratory Failure Compared With Conventional Oxygen Therapy and Noninvasive Positive Pressure Ventilation? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

I need help with this. Is it me or is this an apples to oranges study? I ask that because the authors compared high flow nasal cannula to conventional oxygen therapy and then they compared HFNC to NIPPV. Okay, the COT versus HFNC is an easy one to settle. Fewer people are going to be intubated if they’re on HFNC, all comers. But the caveats kick in when the authors compare HFNC to NIPPV which many of you know as BiPAP. My issue is because they included patients who were having acute exacerbations of COPD, acute cardiogenic pulmonary edema, asthma exacerbations, and ARDS in the HFNC vs NIV arm of the study. It is my opinion that that’s a bit ridiculous bc we know (and knew in 2017 when this study was published) that those patient populations more often than not need more support than what HFNC can provide. I will say there is data for HFNC in all those settings, but not enough to prove a benefit to NIV. Can you chime in below with your thoughts? I don’t think they should have looked at all comers for HFNC. Taking it by disease processes which other authors have done would yield actual real world results. These devices need to be carefully tailored to the patients you are treating. I’m more than willing to change my mind but I need help. Thanks.  

-EJ

Link to abstract

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Cardiogenic Pulmonary Edema: Does Non-Invasive Ventilation work for this?

Link to the Abstract

This happens every single day at every shop I’ve worked at. Patient comes in with a CHF exacerbation sucking wind. You feel you have a little bit of wiggle room and don’t have to intubate them, while at the same time they’re too sick for nasal cannula or high flow. What do you reach for? The “BiPAP” machine! Now, just for clarification, the nomenclature is all wonky for this machine and its settings which is a different post all in itself. BiPAP is when you have a difference between the IPAP and EPAP settings while CPAP is when the IPAP and EPAP settings are the same. Being a good clinician; #physician or #respiratorytherapist, what you need to do is spend some time at the bedside hanging out with your patient to make sure you find the sweet spot that’s comfortable for them. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s impossible and they need to be intubated. This meta-analysis shows that pts who get placed on the #CPAP setting do better than those placed on #BiPAP setting with decreased mortality. A 🎩 tip to the authors.

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Noninvasive Ventilation of Patients with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

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Noninvasive Ventilation in Acute Hypoxemic Respiratory Failure

Link to Abstract

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Helmet vs Face Mask NIV for ARDS

I originally posted this article on 6/21/19 while preparing my NIV/BiPAP lecture. During that process, I learned and shared on IG about using a helmet rather than a mask for NIV (non-invasive ventilation). Looking at the footage that has been coming out of Italy and other parts of the world, you can catch a glimpse of their pumps, ventilators, and in the case of this post, the fact that many institutions are using the helmets.

Why are these places using helmets instead of face masks and what does the data say?

The study I am referring to was published in JAMA in 2016 and they compared utilizing a face mask vs a helmet setup in patients with ARDS. The study was actually stopped early because the data was so good. They were trying to get to 206 patients but stopped at 83.

The authors found that patients who wore the helmet were intubated less frequently, 18.2% vs. 61.5%, had more ventilator free days, a shorter length of stay in the ICU, and lower both in-hospital mortality and 90 day mortality. Patients were also on NIV with the helmet for a shorter period of time utilizing less PEEP, less pressure support, and required a lower FiO2.

Could the helmet be a tool to help out to minimize the need for intubation and mechanical ventilation? Does anyone here have experience with the helmet setup? This study was created in Chicago, I'm sure there's has to be someone around here who was at that institution while this study was being performed.

-EJ

Patel BK, Wolfe KS, Pohlman AS, Hall JB, Kress JP. Effect of Noninvasive Ventilation Delivered by Helmet vs Face Mask on the Rate of Endotracheal Intubation in Patients With Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2016;315(22):2435–2441. doi:10.1001/jama.2016.6338

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NIV in COPD

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004104.pub4/full

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004104.pub4/epdf/full

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High-Flow Nasal Cannula in Acute Hypoxemic Respiratory Failure: A Review of the FLORALI Trial

High-Flow Oxygen through Nasal Cannula in Acute Hypoxemic Respiratory Failure

I first shared this article in June of 2019 on Instagram when my account had a mere 2500 followers. Since then the amount of followers to my account have skyrocketed and I could not have done it without the help of each and every one of you who find value in what I do.
As an aside, many of you know I'm preparing a lecture on high-flow nasal cannula and non-invasive ventilation. This article is one of the landmark trials in the HFNC literature and it's worth revisiting in greater detail. After all, I wasn't taking articles apart in as much depth several months ago as I am now. The name by which this study is commonly referred to is the FLORALI trial, as in high FLow Oxygen therapy in Resuscitation of patients with Acute Lung Injury. Witty, huh? The authors had noted that there weren't any studies looking at non-invasive ventilation in patients who were in acute hypoxemic respiratory failure that were not hypercapnic. They went ahead to detail all the beneficial effects of HFNC which I have beat you all over the head with on this medium. They went ahead and designed a prospective, multicenter, randomized, controlled trial to see which worked best to avoid intubations and improve outcomes in patients who were in hypoxemic respiratory failure: NIV, HFNC, or standard oxygen therapy which I will herein refer to as SOT.
They chose to enroll patients who were sick, but not too sick. After all, you need to enroll patients and keep them safe at the same time. If you choose patients who are too sick, then clinicians aren't going to follow the study protocol. They had a strict protocol as well to intubate patients so that patients wouldn't be left lingering without being intubated. After all, there is clear data that if you wait too long to intubate, patients do poorly and there is increased mortality. They included patients who were hypoxemic with a PF ratio < 300, needing a flow of 10L, a PaCO2 < 45 (so no COPD exacerbation patients here) and no chronic respiratory failure. Asthmatics were also excluded, as well as cardiogenic pulmonary edema, use of vasopressors, and hemodynamic instability. They had other parameters but you can check out the article for yourself.
Patients were randomized at 1:1:1 for SOT (nonrebreather at flow of 10L), HFNC (50L of flow and FiO2 titrated), and NIV (pressure support titrated to obtain a tidal volume of 7-10cc/kg ideal body weight and a PEEP between 2-10cmH2O).
When you look at the characteristics of the patients enrolled, and they enrolled 310 of them, the vast majority had pneumonia with a predominance of community acquired followed by healthcare associated pneumonia.
The primary outcome was rates of intubation. There was no difference if you just look at the direct comparison p-value of 0.18. When you look at the patients who had a PF ratio less than 200, though, the patients with HFNC did MUCH better with p-value of 0.009. This is your indication, team! You have someone with pneumonia, don't put the on NIV when HFNC may work better!
Fewer patients died in the ICU if they were to receive HFNC versus the other two (p=0.047).
There was also improved 90 day survival in the HFNC group (p=0.02). This was enough info, and more in the article that you really should read for yourself, to convince many ED and ICU practitioners that HFNC is the way to go in this patient population. Check the article out for yourself!

- EJ





FREE FULL PDF with an account

Frat JP, Thille AW, Mercat A, Girault C, Ragot S, Perbet S, et al.; FLORALI Study Group; REVA Network. High-flow oxygen through nasal cannula in acute hypoxemic respiratory failure. N Engl J Med 2015;372:2185–2196.

Although great care has been taken to ensure that the information in this post is accurate, eddyjoemd, LLC shall not be held responsible or in any way liable for the continued accuracy of the information, or for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies, or for any consequences arising therefrom.