The author of that post is Josh Farkas, a pulmonologist (i.e. lung specialist) and assistant professor of critical care and pulmonary disease (i.e. lung disease.)
“Prone” here means a face-down lying position, the opposite of “supine” which means face-up. The author says “Typically we prone intubated patients.” From context, I am reading “we” to mean his hospital / department, and “prone” to mean “rotate into the prone position for 6-18 hours per day.” The commonality of this practice seems to vary among hospitals.
The post, however, is a discussion of proning for awake, non-intubated patients, and concludes that it appears safe and effective. There is a lot of uncertainty around how effective it is, but it looks to me like, if you have pneumonia and hospital treatment is not available to you, there is some evidence that—perhaps counterintuitively—you will breathe better lying on your belly, vs. on your back.
(The main counterpoint I have seen to this is that frequently moving around and changing positions is best. I can’t tell whether the post is largely about patients who are too out-of-it to do that. I have seen it suggested that, if you’re able, sitting up is better than lying down (I have no cite handy for this.) There seems to be overall agreement, at least, on this one point: lying stationary on your back for long periods of time is NOT good when you have lung problems.)
Listing / summarizing some things I’ve seen elsewhere:
This general summary post by Sarah Constantin: https://srconstantin.github.io/2020/03/27/home-care-mild-COVID19.html
A post by SC specifically on “non-invasive ventilation”, meaning CPAP and BiPAP machines (which some people may already have at home), with positive conclusions: https://srconstantin.github.io/2020/03/20/non-invasive-ventilation.html
A document by Matt Bell with information about chloroquine phosphate / hydroxychloroquine: https://docs.google.com/document/d/160RKDODAa-MTORfAqbuc25V8WDkLjqj4itMDyzBTpcc/
One of the most intriguing things I saw was about “proning”: https://emcrit.org/pulmcrit/proning-nonintubated/
The author of that post is Josh Farkas, a pulmonologist (i.e. lung specialist) and assistant professor of critical care and pulmonary disease (i.e. lung disease.)
“Prone” here means a face-down lying position, the opposite of “supine” which means face-up. The author says “Typically we prone intubated patients.” From context, I am reading “we” to mean his hospital / department, and “prone” to mean “rotate into the prone position for 6-18 hours per day.” The commonality of this practice seems to vary among hospitals.
The post, however, is a discussion of proning for awake, non-intubated patients, and concludes that it appears safe and effective. There is a lot of uncertainty around how effective it is, but it looks to me like, if you have pneumonia and hospital treatment is not available to you, there is some evidence that—perhaps counterintuitively—you will breathe better lying on your belly, vs. on your back.
(The main counterpoint I have seen to this is that frequently moving around and changing positions is best. I can’t tell whether the post is largely about patients who are too out-of-it to do that. I have seen it suggested that, if you’re able, sitting up is better than lying down (I have no cite handy for this.) There seems to be overall agreement, at least, on this one point: lying stationary on your back for long periods of time is NOT good when you have lung problems.)