New study reveals that lying on the abdomen in ICU’s does not reduce need for ventilators

According to the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health, lying on the stomach in ICU for COVID-19 patients does not reduce a need for ventilation systems or minimise death chances.

 The study was conducted in collaboration with international research centres from the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, according to Al-Amiri Hospital's head of anaesthesia and intensive care, Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Fares.

Intensive care patients from Al-Amiri and Jaber Al-Ahmad hospitals' ICUs participated in this study to see if they may benefit from resting on their backs or their abdomens to prevent acute lung failure from COVID-19. On Monday, an international scientific publication published a research including 400 patients, 49 of them were from Kuwait, he said.

According to him, the findings of a randomised clinical trial in which patients were randomly assigned to either lie on their stomachs for a certain amount of time or lie on their backs for the duration of the therapy were not promising in terms of reducing the need for ventilators. According to him, the study's significance rests in its ability to update the treatment procedures utilised throughout the world for cases of acute lung failure.

According to him, when the number of coronavirus infections began to rise, patients with pulmonary collapse were increasingly being treated by putting them on their stomachs in ICUs in the prone position, in the hopes that this would improve the amount of oxygen they breathed in. Many persons with COVID-19 infection are treated in the intensive care unit (ICU), which aids in lung expansion and air inhalation, but a study has shown that this approach does not work, as he said. Fares and Sarah Buabbas were involved in the study, which was supported by the medical and nursing staff in the ICUs of both institutions.