More Good COVID-19 News
4/22/20 University of Chicago Medicine:
Doctors at the University of Chicago Medicine are seeing “truly
remarkable” results using high-flow nasal cannulas rather than
ventilators and intubation to treat some COVID-19 patients.
High-flow nasal cannulas, or HFNCs, are non-invasive nasal prongs
that sit below the nostrils and blow large volumes of warm, humidified
oxygen into the nose and lungs.
A team from UChicago Medicine’s emergency room took dozens of
COVID-19 patients who were in respiratory distress and gave them HFNCs
instead of putting them on ventilators. The patients all fared extremely
well, and only one of them required intubation after 10 days.
“The success we’ve had has been truly remarkable,” said Michael O’Connor, MD, UChicago Medicine’s Director of Critical Care Medicine.
I had a long phone conference with a neighboring couple who are both MDs. My proposal was to use a hyperbaric chamber with almost pure O2 since that is the recommended treatment for Carbon Monoxide poisoning. The effects and symptoms of this poisoning and COVID-19 are the same even though the mechanism is different.
ReplyDeleteIf you have one of those finger things that measure your pulse, they also report %SpO2, or the percentage of your hemoglobin that is oxygen saturated. Above 95% is good, down from there to about 90% is iffy, and anything below that is get thee to the ER right f..ing now. I had a concern the other day when mine read 94% then the next morning it dropped to 92% but rebounded to 94% within minutes. Yesterday it was, whew, back up to 98%.