Management of the hypoxemic acute respiratory failure in Pediatrics.

Abstract

The hypoxemic acute respiratory failure may be the initial presentation or additional complication in critically sick children; its management since the moment of diagnosis determines the final result of many of these patients. With the objective of perfecting that prognostic there have been designed many therapeutic maneuvers, some of which have shown positive influence on the final evaluation, like protective ventilation; others have been effective on physiologic variables (oxygenation), like the case of oscillatory high frequency ventilation, the decubito prone, the inhaled nitric oxide, the surfactant therapy, alveolar recruitment maneuvers and oxygenation by extracorporeal membrane. Nonetheless it is necessary to deepen in prospective studies about the truly utility of each of them in the final outcoming of the patient. In this article we pretend to offer the nowadays state of the strategies in the management of the hypoxemic acute respiratory failure in children.