Practical strategies for airway clearance in patients with severe COVID-19

Due to the extreme severity of illness, patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) with COVID-19 have often required prolonged periods of mechanical ventilation, coupled with prone positioning and paralysis to achieve adequate gas exchange and oxygenation (Chang et al., 2021, McWilliams et al., 2021). Despite initial concerns regarding the potential increased risk of aerosol generation through MHI, this can be avoided with the use of optimal personal protective equipment (Lormans et al., 2021). When treating a patient in the prone position, saline should be instilled in the reverse Trendelenburg position before the patient is repositioned into flat or head down.Financial support and sponsorship Nil.Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.