Caution about early intubation and mechanical ventilation in COVID-19

Caution about early intubation and mechanical ventilation in COVID-19

by Martin J. Tobin, Franco Laghi and Amal Jubran 

Annals of Intensive Care volume 10, Article number: 78 (2020)

A fear of ventilator shortage with COVID-19 panicked politicians into demanding automakers to branch into ventilator manufacture.

Some experts have argued that mechanical ventilation should be employed early in order to prevent COVID-19 patients progressing from mild disease to more severe lung injury. This viewpoint has been expressed most forcefully by Marini and Gattinoni in a JAMA Editorial [1], where they attest that vigorous spontaneous inspiratory efforts can rapidly lead to patient self-induced lung injury (P-SILI).