The theory here is that this sensing mechanism goes awry in COVID19. Pulmonary arteries don't constrict in response to poor oxygenation. Patients don't feel a sensation of breathlessness even though they're hypoxemic, because the usual responses to low O2 aren't working.
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Why doesn't "silent hypoxemia" stay harmless? If I understand the article correctly, this is because you're breathing so much more that there's an increase in "inspiratory intrathoracic pressure", and this damages the lung, causing "P-SILI", or patient-self-inflicted lung injury.
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If you make a sheep hyperventilate, it damages its lungs, for instance.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00255628 …
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Now patients who previously had a *little* bit of lung damage have a LOT of lung damage. And therefore it looks more like typical ARDS: low compliance, high lung weight, high recruitability, and much bigger lung lesions visible on a chest CT.
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logically this implies: keep patients from hyperventilating while they're still in "silent hypoxemia" so they don't breathe so much they progress to full-blown severe ARDS.
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how do you do this? it looks like it's a matter of debate right now. one thing I've seen in a couple papers is "use work of breathing to determine when to intubate". Patient can't breathe too hard if a machine's breathing for them!
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The big conclusion the COVID19 paper draws about patients with low oxygen but no dyspnea is *give 'em lots of oxygen.* Tradeoffs are more ambiguous about PEEP.
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The other conclusion is that you want to intubate when the inspiratory pressure swings are starting to get big, as controlling the breathing rate can *prevent* additional lung injury.
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"As esophageal pressure swings increase from 5 to 10 cmH2O—which are generally well tolerated—to above 15 cmH2O, the risk of lung injury increases and therefore intubation should be performed as soon as possible."
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Also, if we could figure out *how* COVID19 blocks hypoxic vasoconstriction, and find a way to make it *stop*, those "silent hypoxemic" patients could get their V/Q back to normal, and thus would no longer be hypoxemic (since they don't have much lung damage to begin with.)
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