RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Comparison of High-Flow Nasal Cannula and Noninvasive Ventilation in Acute Hypoxemic Respiratory Failure Due to Severe COVID-19 Pneumonia JF Respiratory Care FD American Association for Respiratory Care SP respcare.09130 DO 10.4187/respcare.09130 A1 Parvathy Ramachandran Nair A1 Damarla Haritha A1 Srikant Behera A1 Choro Athiphro Kayina A1 Souvik Maitra A1 Rahul Kumar Anand A1 Bikash Ranjan Ray A1 Manish Soneja A1 Rajeshwari Subramaniam A1 Dalim Kumar Baidya YR 2021 UL http://rc.rcjournal.com/content/early/2021/09/28/respcare.09130.abstract AB BACKGROUND: Efficacy of high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) over noninvasive ventilation (NIV) in severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia is not known. We aimed to assess the incidence of invasive mechanical ventilation in patients with acute hypoxemic respiratory failure due to COVID-19 treated with either HFNC or NIV.METHODS: This was a single-center randomized controlled trial performed in the COVID-19 ICU of a tertiary care teaching hospital in New Delhi, India. One hundred and nine subjects with severe COVID-19 pneumonia presenting with acute hypoxemic respiratory failure were recruited and allocated to either HFNC (n = 55) or NIV (n = 54) arm. Primary outcome was intubation by 48 h. Secondary outcomes were improvement in oxygenation by 48 h, intubation rate at day 7, and in-hospital mortality.RESULTS: Baseline characteristics and PaO2/FIO2 ratio were similar in both the groups. Intubation rate at 48 h was similar between the groups (33% NIV vs 20% HFNC, relative risk 0.6, 95% CI 0.31–1.15, P = .12). Intubation rate at day 7 was lower in the HFNC (27.27%) compared to the NIV group (46.29%) (relative risk 0.59, 95% CI 0.35–0.99, P = .045), and this difference remained significant after adjustment for the incidence of chronic kidney disease and the arterial pH (adjusted OR 0.40, 95% CI 0.17–0.93, P = .03). Hospital mortality was similar between HFNC (29.1%) and NIV (46.2%) group (relative risk 0.6, 95% CI 0.38–1.04, P = .06).CONCLUSIONS: We were not able to demonstrate a statistically significant improvement of oxygenation parameters nor of the intubation rate at 48 h between NIV and HFNC. These findings should be further tested in a larger randomized controlled trial.The study was registered at the Clinical Trials Registry of India (www.ctri.nic.in; reference number: CTRI/2020/07/026835) on July 27, 2020.