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09 April 2020, Bavaria, Munich: During his stay in the Gro’hadern hospital, a patient lies on a ventilator and dialysis machine in an intensive care room. A Covid-19 suspicion has not been confirmed in the man. Photo by: Peter Kneffel\/picture-alliance\/dpa\/AP Images<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
By Lynn Allison
\nNEWSMAX<\/p>\n
A maneuver called \u201cproning\u201d may save lives during the\u00a0coronavirus pandemic. It\u2019s a delicate procedure performed by healthcare workers, who carefully turn critically ill patients onto their stomachs in order to improve breathing.<\/p>\n
Lying on your stomach helps by opening airways in fluid-filled lungs and taking\u00a0pressure off the lungs themselves. It\u2019s a tried-and-true procedure that\u2019s gaining popularity,\u00a0and many hospitals have established \u201cproning teams\u201d specifically for the sole purpose of flipping patients as needed.<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0Business Insider<\/a>, Colleen Snydeman, director of the Nursing and Patient Care Services Office of Quality and Safety at Massachusetts General Hospital, said proning has been used in U.S. hospitals for years to treat patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS.<\/p>\n Patients with ARDS had a much higher survival rate when they were proned instead of lying on their backs, according to Business Insider.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was something that was being done, but definitely not at the rate that it\u2019s being done now,\u201d Snydeman said. Experts said that flipping a severely ill person is challenging.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a challenging job because of the meticulous care and caution that needs to be done when you\u2019re turning these patients, who are among the most fragile,\u201d Dr. Stephen Trzeciak, chief of medicine at Cooper University Health Care, told Business Insider. \u201cThey\u2019re just barely clinging to life and you have to be very careful as you do that.\u201d<\/p>\n It takes a team of at least four people to turn a patient over properly without risking complication or further damage to patients. Proning can greatly improve survival rates for those on ventilators and may even be able to keep some patients off the machines, said Business Insider. And some hospitals are regularly using the technique on COVID-19 patients who are less ill to help them breathe more easily.<\/p>\n