What nasal high flow (NHF) settings should I use?
As always, the initiation of NHF and settings used are the clinicians’ decision, based on the individual patient.
A review of NHF controlled studies using a systematic search of the PubMed database found that the flow rates ranged from 10 to 60 L/min and the majority of the studies required flow rates of ≥ 45 L/min.
Protocols based on published research are starting to emerge for some patient populations. One of the first of these was published in 2017 by Ischaki et al. and is specific to patients with acute hypoxemic respiratory failure (AHRF). Others have been published by Ricard et al 2019, d’Espiney et al 2020 (hypercapnia), Pantazopoulos et al 2020 (COPD with Hypercapnic respiratory failure) and Raoof et al 2020 (COVID-19)
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