Awake Prone Position to Reduce Ventilation Inhomogeneity in COVID-19 Acute Respiratory Failure

Awake prone position has been proposed as an additional treatment to alleviate hypoxemia during COVID-19 acute respiratory failure and potentially to avoid in some case tracheal intubation and invasive ventilation. Potential mechanism is improvement of ventilation: perfusion mismatch through redistribution of ventilation to the dorsal part of the lungs where perfusion is prominent. Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-invasive functional lung imaging of distribution of ventilation. Therefore, we aim to assess EIT on lung ventilation inhomogeneity during supine and prone position in COVID-19 patients.