Air Hunger and Psychological Trauma in Ventilated COVID-19 Patients: An Urgent Problem.

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An unprecedented number of people will experience mechanical ventilation in the next few months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our clear mission is to sustain these patients while they mount an immune defense to the virus, and to do minimum harm in the process. A key therapeutic strategy will be lung protective ventilation, an approach that entails low tidal volumes and permissive hypercapnia, for treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) caused by the virus. Unfortunately, this is also the recipe for “air hunger” – the most uncomfortable form of dyspnea.

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Note: It is a 7 page PDF file.