The “helmet”, intended for patients with severe respiratory failure, such as those with Covid-19 pneumonia, reduces the need for intubation by 40%: this was revealed by the study coordinated by the Gemelli Hospital in Rome recently published in the scientific journal . American “Jama”
We have learned to recognize this strange support, which has unfortunately become familiar to the news, but not everyone knows that it is a totally Italian tool: what the resuscitators call in lingo. “helmet“It is intended for patients with severe respiratory failure, such as those with Covid-19 pneumonia. A non-invasive ventilation solution, invented and produced in Italy, and used mainly by Italian rescuers. But now, a study just published in an authoritative scientific journal “Jama”, the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows that in Covid-19 patients the “Italian way” may be the winner.
The “helmet”, in fact, reduces the need for intubation by 40%, compared to high-flow oxygen therapy, which is considered the optimal respiratory support in hypoxemia. The authors Domenico Luca Grieco and Massimo Antonelli for the Covid-Icu Gemelli Study Group, they recognize that the helmet is the best method to make patients with acute respiratory failure, caused by pneumonia, “breathe”, reducing the need for intubation and invasive mechanical ventilation.
“The helmet is a totally Italian approach. Its use is not frequent abroad – explains Dr. Domenico Luca Grieco, resuscitator of the Intensive Care Unit of the Hospital Columbus Covid2-Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS – while high-flow oxygen therapy has so far been considered the standard of gold for these patients. The helmet is a different way of helping patients, since it allows to deliver very high pressures that allow the lung affected by the inflammatory process to ‘reopen’ and reduce respiratory fatigue in these patients. Studies in the past have shown that the use of these high pressures protects the lung from further damage during ventilation. “
“Furthermore – continues Luca Grieco – the helmet is very comfortable compared to the other non-invasive ventilation interfaces: this allows continuous treatments with few interruptions, which would seem to be a fundamental feature to avoid intubation. In this work we compare the effects of “high flow oxygen therapy with those of the helmet. And the results show that the helmet avoids the use of invasive ventilation (intubation) in approximately 40% more patients ”.
However, punctuality is needed. “Patients treated with helmets must be closely monitored – explains Dr. Grieco – because when intubation becomes necessary, it should not be delayed, doing so would increase mortality. They are promising results, the result of work carried out in an emergency context ”.
The Henivot study, coordinated by the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, funded by the Italian Society of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Intensive Care and Intensive Care and carried out in collaboration with the Hospital of Rimini and the Universities of Ferrara, Chieti and Bologna, was carried out between October 2020 and February 2021 in 109 patients enrolled in some Italian intensive care units.
Massimo Antonelli, Domenico Luca Grieco and Gennaro De Pascale
The “helmets” are produced in Emilia Romagna, precisely in Mirandola, in the Silicon Valley of Italian electromedicine. To believe in helmets for patients with Covid-19 there were also 5 Italian businessmen – Flavio Cattaneo, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Diego Della Valle, Isabella Seragnoli and Alberto Vacchi – who, last spring, through the association “Aiutiamoci”, founded by them, they bought several hundred to donate to various Italian regions, including Lazio.
