Effect of awake prone positioning in COVID-19 patients- A systematic review

Prone positioning is known to reduce mortality in intubated non-COVID-19 patients suffering from moderate to severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). However, studies highlighting the effect of awake proning in COVID-19 patients are lacking. We aim to conduct a systematic review of the available literature to highlight the effect of awake proning on the need for intubation, improvement in oxygenation and mortality rates in COVID-19 patients with ARDS.

- A systematic search of 2 medical databases (PubMed, Google Scholar) was performed until July 5, 2020. Thirteen studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria, and 210 patients were included for the final analysis.

-Majority of the patients were above 50 years of age with a male gender predominance (69%). Face mask (26%) was the most common interface used for oxygen therapy. The intubation and mortality rates were 23.80% (50/210) and 5.41% (5/203) respectively. Awake proning resulted in improvement in oxygenation (reported by 11/13 studies): improvement in SpO₂, P/F ratio, PO₂ and SaO₂ reported by 7/13 (54%), 5/13 (38%), 2/13 (15%) and 1/13 (8%) of the studies. No major complications associated with prone positioning were reported by the included studies.

Awake prone positioning demonstrated an improvement in oxygenation of the patients suffering from COVID-19 related respiratory disease. Need for intubation was observed in less than 30% of the patients. Thus, we recommend early and frequent proning in patients suffering from COVID-19 associated ARDS, however, randomized controlled trials are needed before any definite conclusions are drawn.