Studies reveal majority of ventilated COVID-19 patients don't survive

Studies from the U.S., China and Europe have shown that most patients with COVID-19 who need to be put on a ventilator will die and those who survive the illness may need to be on a breathing machine for the rest of their life. 

The largest of these studies, conducted by the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre in London, found that only 33 of 98 ventilated patients with the coronavirus were discharged alive, according to NPR. 

In Wuhan, China, a study showed only three of 22 patients put on a ventilator survived and in Washington state, a similar study said nine of 18 ventilated patients survived. 

Dr. Tiffany Osborn, a critical care specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, has been working with coronavirus patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. She told NPR it concerned her to see how few patients survived once taken off a ventilator. The research also showed the longer a patient was on a ventilator, the more likely they were to die. 

"We're not sure how much help ventilators are going to be," Osborn told NPR. "They may help keep somebody alive in the short term. We're not sure if it's going to help keep someone alive in the long term."

Osborn told NPR that "the ventilator itself can do damage to the lung tissue based on how much pressure is required to help oxygen get processed by the lungs." Since patients with COVID-19 tend to have extreme lung inflammation, high levels of oxygen and pressure are often needed. They also have the potential to carry dangerous germs into the lungs, she said.  

Dr. Negin Hajizadeh, a pulmonary critical care doctor at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell on Long Island, New York, said ventilators are critical for coronavirus patients who have developed a form of pneumonia. 

"We treat patients for several days, and then we get the antibiotics into the body and the patient recovers," she told NPR. "Unfortunately with this COVID-associated pneumonia, there are no treatments that we know work for sure."

But if a patient has severe damage in their lungs from COVID-19 and not pneumonia, Hajuzadeh said the ventilators won't help their condition. And the coronavirus tends to cause damage to lungs more often than the associated pneumonia. 

Even with help from a ventilator, Osborn told NPR that patients' lung won't always heal. 

"I know that at times it gets frustrating," she told NPR. "But it's really important not only for yourself and your family but for the other people you care about to shelter in place until this is over."