TY - JOUR T1 - Prehospital continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) for acute respiratory distress: a randomised controlled trial JF - Emergency Medicine Journal JO - Emerg Med J DO - 10.1136/emermed-2020-210256 SP - emermed-2020-210256 AU - Judith C Finn AU - Deon Brink AU - Nicole Mckenzie AU - Antony Garcia AU - Hideo Tohira AU - Gavin D Perkins AU - Glenn Arendts AU - Daniel M Fatovich AU - Delia Hendrie AU - Brendan McQuillan AU - Quentin Summers AU - Antonio Celenza AU - Ashes Mukherjee AU - Ben Smedley AU - Gavin Pereira AU - Stephen Ball AU - Teresa Williams AU - Paul Bailey Y1 - 2021/03/25 UR - http://emj.bmj.com/content/early/2021/03/25/emermed-2020-210256.abstract N2 - Objective To compare the efficacy of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) versus usual care for prehospital patients with severe respiratory distress.Methods We conducted a parallel group, individual patient, non-blinded randomised controlled trial in Western Australia between March 2016 and December 2018. Eligible patients were aged ≥40 years with acute severe respiratory distress of non-traumatic origin and unresponsive to initial treatments by emergency medical service (EMS) paramedics. Patients were randomised (1:1) to usual care or usual care plus CPAP. The primary outcomes were change in dyspnoea score and change in RR at ED arrival, and hospital length of stay.Results 708 patients were randomly assigned (opaque sealed envelope) to usual care (n=346) or CPAP (n=362). Compared with usual care, patients randomised to CPAP had a greater reduction in dyspnoea scores (usual care −1.0, IQR −3.0 to 0.0 vs CPAP −3.5, IQR −5.2 to −2.0), median difference −2.0 (95% CI −2.5 to −1.6); and RR (usual care −4.0, IQR −9.0 to 0.0 min-1 vs CPAP −8.0, IQR −14.0 to −4.0 min-1), median difference −4.0 (95% CI −5.0 to −4.0) min-1. There was no difference in hospital length of stay (usual care 4.2, IQR 2.1 to 7.8 days vs CPAP 4.8, IQR 2.5 to 7.9 days) for the n=624 cases admitted to hospital, median difference 0.36 (95% CI −0.17 to 0.90).Conclusions The use of prehospital CPAP by EMS paramedics reduced dyspnoea and tachypnoea in patients with acute respiratory distress but did not impact hospital length of stay.Trial registration number ACTRN12615001180505. ER -