Walking acute respiratory distress syndrome: A target for treatment and prevention?

摘要

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) remains a severe complication of critical illness and injury with an associated mortality approaching 40% (1). ARDS is linked to longer hospital stays, increased costs, and worse long-term health-related quality of life (2-5). As critical care providers, we intuitively believe that interventions with the capacity to prevent ARDS, or attenuate its severity, should substantially reduce morbidity, mortality, and resource utilization associated with this syndrome. Over the past two decades we have witnessed significant advances in supportive treatments for those with ARDS, resulting in improved outcomes. However, over the same time frame comparatively little effort has been directed to the prevention of ARDS. More recently, a number of investigators are engaged in ARDS prevention research, with requests for funding applications in development.