COVID-19 Pneumonia: Different Respiratory Treatments for Different Phenotypes?
The Surviving Sepsis Campaign panel recently recommended that “mechanically ventilated patients with COVID-19 should be managed similarly to other patients with acute respiratory failure in the ICU.”
Yet, COVID-19 pneumonia, despite falling in most of the circumstances under the Berlin definition of ARDS, is a specific disease, whose distinctive features are severe hypoxemia often associated with near normal respiratory system compliance (more than 50% of the 150 patients measured by the authors and further confirmed by several colleagues in Northern Italy). This remarkable combination is almost never seen in severe ARDS. These severely hypoxemic patients despite sharing a single etiology (SARS-CoV-2) may present quite differently from one another: normally breathing (“silent” hypoxemia) or remarkably dyspneic; quite responsive to nitric oxide or not; deeply hypocapnic or normo/hypercapnic; and either responsive to prone position or not. Therefore, the same disease actually presents itself with impressive non-uniformity.
In conclusion, Type L and Type H patients are best identified by CT scan and are affected by different pathophysiological mechanisms. If not available, signs which are implicit in Type L and Type H definition could be used as surrogates: respiratory system elastance and recruitability. Understanding the correct pathophysiology is crucial to establishing the basis for appropriate treatment.
