Effects of intubation timing in patients with COVID-19 throughout the four waves of the pandemic: a matched analysis.

"Conflicts of interest: O. Roca discloses a research grant from Hamilton Medical AG; speaker fees from Hamilton Medical AG, Ambu, Fisher & Paykel Ltd and Aerogen Ltd; and nonfinancial research support from Timpel and Masimo. R. Mellado-Artigas reports speaker fees from Medtronic and Fisher & Paykel, all outside the submitted work. The remaining authors declare no conflicts of interest."

"Support statement: Financial support was provided by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III de Madrid (COV20/00110, ISCIII), Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), “Una manera de hacer Europa” and the Centro de Investigación Biomedica En Red – Enfermedades Respiratorias (CIBERES). D. de Gonzalo-Calvo has received financial support from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (Miguel Servet 2020: CP20/00041), co-funded by European Social Fund (ESF)/“Investing in Your Future”. Funding information for this article has been deposited with the Crossref Funder Registry."

"This is a secondary analysis of a multicentre, observational and prospective cohort study that included all consecutive patients undergoing invasive mechanical ventilation due to COVID-19 from across 58 Spanish ICUs participating in the CIBERESUCICOVID project (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04457505) (details of participating centres are provided in supplementary table S1). The study period was between 29 February 2020 and 31 August 2021. Two cohorts were established: early intubation and delayed intubation. The former was defined as those patients receiving the procedure within the first 24 h of ICU admission, while the latter was defined as those receiving the procedure after the first day of ICU admission. Clinical outcomes were compared between the early and delayed intubation groups. Moreover, we analysed the influence of the Spanish pandemic waves on the proportion of patients intubated within or after 24 h of ICU admission, determining whether these different periods had any impact on outcomes. We also performed a subgroup analysis based on the noninvasive respiratory support used prior to intubation and performed sensitivity analyses considering a 48-h time-point (intubation within or after 48 h from ICU admission) to explore other understandings of early or delayed intubation. Supplementary table S2 lists the periods that comprised each wave."