Among ICU patients with acute hypoxemic respiratory failure, high-flow oxygen use led to significantly lower rates of 90-day mortality, although only slightly lower rates of subsequent intubation, compared with other oxygen delivery methods, researchers reported at the American Thoracic Society annual meeting.

In an open-label, multi-center, randomized trial with over 300 patients, intubation rates at the 28-day mark trended lower for patients treated with high-flow oxygen nasal cannula devices (38%) compared to standard oxygen delivery (47%), and noninvasive ventilation (50%, P=0.18), Jean-Pierre Frat, MD, of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Poitiers in France, and colleagues wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.