Electrical Impedance Tomography: Collapse in Dependent Areas as a Predictor of Response to Prone Position Ventilation in COVID-19 Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

There are several clinical presentations of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Among the severe forms, pulmonary involvement with respiratory failure is common. Although severe lung involvement with SARS-CoV-2 meets the Berlin criteria for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), it differs from classic ARDS in that compliance (reflecting distensibility of the lung parenchyma) is frequently preserved. If the interest of Electrical Impedance Tomography has been demonstrated in classical ARDS, this is not the case in ARDS with COVID-19. However, the use of this technique in this particular patient population would make it possible to distinguish patients with severe hypoxemia linked to derecruitment from those without derecruitment, in whom hypoxemia is more likely to be linked to the loss of hypoxic vasoconstriction.