Comparison of High Flow Nasal Cannula and Continuous Positive Airway Pressure in Patients of COVID 19 Pneumonia

Abstract

Noval corona virus 2019 which also called as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) lead to severe pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. CPAP and HFNC as been used as non invasive mode of ventilation during this pandemicity declared by the WHO as a global public health emergency [1].HFNC is a recent therapy for covid -19 pneumonia, curiosity to know more about HFNC and CPAP lead us to conducted a retrospective study of CPAP vs HFNC in our institute for covid-19 positive patients treatment admitted in ICU during 19 October 2020 to 30 January 2021. A sample size of 26 patients included in our study with mean spo2 at the time of admission of CPAP group 85% and HFNC group 89% and mean age is comparable in both groups. We found more patient discharge and less death (60%) in HFNC group as compare to CPAP group were death is (91%) in our ICU setting. As well as comorbities are more associated with HFNC group (80%) as compare to CPAP group (36.4%). The limitation is that it is single centre study, so further large-sample studies will be required to validate the conclusion and preferably through prospective randomized trials.