Non-invasive ventilation in patients with novel coronavirus infection COVID-19

In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, many guidelines for the management of patients with new coronavirus infection did not include recommendations for the use of non-invasive ventilation (NIV) due to the concerns that NIV could be accompanied by high tidal volumes that could cause lung damage. In addition, there was an opinion that NIV increases the risk of spreading bioaerosol containing the SARS-CoV-2 virus. At the same time, NIV was widely used in real clinical practice in the management of severe patients with COVID-19 (in some countries, up to 60% of all respiratory support methods). The accumulated experience demonstrates that when applying NIV, the risk of contamination with viral infections is minimized with adequate use of personal protective equipment. To date, the results of a limited number of studies about effectiveness of NIV in hypoxemic acute respiratory failure (ARF) in patients with COVID-19 are available. In most studies, the need for tracheal intubation and hospital mortality, were on average, 20 - 30%, that suggests a fairly high effectiveness of NIV in ARF in patients with COVID-19