COVID-19 Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 12 pp 15801—15814
Course of illness and outcomes in older COVID-19 patients treated with HFNC: a retrospective analysis
- 1 Department of Critical Care Medicine of Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical University, Guangdong, China
- 2 Department of Anesthesiology, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
- 3 Guangdong Medical University Affiliated Lianjiang People’s Hospital, Guangdong, China
- 4 Department of Anesthesiology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
- 5 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, University of California Davis Health, Sacramento, CA 95817, USA
- 6 The Department of Anesthesiology, Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong, China
- 7 Department of Critical Care Medicine of Xiantao First People's Hospital of Xiantao City, Hubei, China
- 8 Department of Critical Care Medicine of People's Hospital of Yangjiang City, Guangdong, China
- 9 Department of Critical Care Medicine of People's Hospital of Maoming City, Guangdong, China
- 10 Chinese Medicine Hospital of Shishou City, Hubei, China
- 11 State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
- 12 Department of Anesthesiology, Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
Received: January 16, 2021 Accepted: May 31, 2021 Published: June 28, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203224How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Deng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly spread worldwide and causes high mortality of elderly patients. High-flow nasal cannula therapy (HFNC) is an oxygen delivery method for severely ill patients. We retrospectively analyzed the course of illness and outcomes in 110 elderly COVID-19 patients (≥65 years) treated with HFNC from 6 hospitals. 38 patients received HFNC (200 mmHg < PaO2/FiO2 ≤ 300 mmHg, early HFNC group), and 72 patients received HFNC (100 mmHg < PaO2/FiO2 ≤ 200 mmHg, late HFNC group). There were no significant differences of sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) scores and APECH II scores between early and late HFNC group on admission. Compared with the late HFNC group, patients in the early HFNC group had a lower likelihood of developing severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), longer time from illness onset to severe ARDS and shorter duration of viral shedding after illness onset, as well as shorter lengths of ICU and hospital stay. 24 patients died during hospitalization, of whom 22 deaths (30.6%) were in the late HFNC group and 2 (5.3%) in the early HFNC group. The present study suggested that the outcomes were better in severely ill elderly patients with COVID-19 receiving early compared to late HFNC.