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Effect of high-flow nasal therapy on dyspnea, comfort, and respiratory rate

Critical Care volume 23, Article number: 201 (2019) Cite this article

Letter to the Editor

Systematic reviews comparing the effect of high-flow nasal treatment (HFNT) to conventional oxygen therapy (COT) or noninvasive ventilation (NIV) have focused on major clinical outcomes (i.e., endotracheal intubation, mortality) [1,2,3]. None have explored weaker outcomes that may nonetheless be important from the patient’s perspective, yet physiopathological mechanisms suggest that the HFNT may provide some advantage in this regard [4, 5]. We therefore systematically reviewed all randomized (RCTs) and crossover trials enrolling patients either post-extubation or during acute respiratory failure (ARF), comparing HFNT to COT or NIV and reporting data about dyspnea, comfort, and respiratory rate (RR) (PROSPERO CRD42019119536).

Full search strategy, detailed study methods, reference lists, and risk of bias assessments are reported in Additional file 1.

Twenty-four relevant studies were identified and included: for patients post-extubation, ten RCTs and one crossover trial and, for patients in ARF, eight RCTs and five crossover trials.

The summary of our findings is presented in the Table 1. More studies compared the effects of HNFT vs COT rather than vs NIV. Overall, there seems to be a trend showing that HFNT is probably not inferior to COT in most studies and perhaps better than NIV in terms of dyspnea, comfort, and decreasing of RR in some studies.

Table 1 Summary of findings in studies of the HFNT with regard to dyspnea, comfort, and respiratory rate
Full size table

Heterogeneity in case-mix, the tools used for outcome assessment and measurement time-points precluded performance of meta-analysis. Neither patients nor treating clinicians were blinded to the intervention in any of the trials, introducing a high risk of detection bias. Differences in HFNT settings (i.e., flow and temperature) and a lack of full description for weaning criteria or protocol may have also contributed to the diversity in findings with regard to comfort and dyspnea.

In this analysis of the literature, the use of HFNT during ARF or post-extubation seems to be not clearly associated with improvements in comfort, dyspnea, and RR since findings from the most recent available evidence were inconsistent. However, in this regard, HFNT does not seem inferior to either COT or NIV. Future research should be focused in assessing patient-reported outcomes using appropriate standardized and validated measures in order to investigate the comparative effectiveness of the different respiratory support strategies.

Abbreviations

ARF:

Acute respiratory failure

COT:

Conventional oxygen therapy

HFNT:

High-flow nasal therapy

NIV:

Noninvasive ventilation

RCT:

Randomized controlled trial

RR:

Respiratory rate

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Filippo Sanfilippo for his help in registering the manuscript to PROSPERO.

Funding

None.

Availability of data and materials

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Surgical, Oncological and Oral Science (Di.Chir.On.S.), Section of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Intensive Care and Emergency, Policlinico Paolo Giaccone, University of Palermo, Via del vespro 129, 90127, Palermo, Italy

    Andrea Cortegiani, Antonino Giarratano & Cesare Gregoretti

  2. Respiratory Medicine Unit, A.O.U. “Policlinico-Vittorio Emanuele”, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 78, 95123, Catania, Italy

    Claudia Crimi

  3. Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, A.O.U. Policlinico “G. Martino”, University of Messina, Via Consolare Valeria 1, 98100, Messina, Italy

    Alberto Noto

  4. Intensive Care Unit of the Shaare Zedek Medical Medical Centre and Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine, Jerusalem, Israel

    Yigal Helviz & Sharon Einav

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  1. Andrea Cortegiani
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Contributions

AC, CC, AN, YE, AG, CG, and ES contributed substantially to the conception and design of the study, the acquisition of data, or the analysis and interpretation of the data. AC, CC, AN, YE, AG, CG, and ES drafted or provided critical revision of the article and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Andrea Cortegiani.

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Competing interests

Cesare Gregoretti received fees for consultancies or lectures from Orion Pharma, ResMed, Medtronic, Philips, Air Liquide and EOVE, and travel cost reimbursement from Fisher & Paykel. All other authors declared that they have no competing interests.

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Additional file

Additional file 1:

List of included studies, search strategy, and risk of bias assessment. Detailed study methods, reference list of included studies, search strategy, risk of bias assessment. (DOCX 520 kb)

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Cortegiani, A., Crimi, C., Noto, A. et al. Effect of high-flow nasal therapy on dyspnea, comfort, and respiratory rate. Crit Care 23, 201 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-019-2473-y

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Critical Care

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