Conservative oxygen therapy does not improve prognosis of critically ill patients: Study

The study results showed that the conventional group had significantly higher SpO2 or PaO2 than that in the conservative group. No statistically significant differences were found in the longest follow-up mortality between the two oxygen strategies when pooling studies enrolling subjects with various degrees of hypoxemia.

Further sensitivity analysis showed that ICU patients with mild-to-moderate hypoxemia had significantly lower mortality when receiving conservative oxygen therapy. These findings were also confirmed in other study periods.

Additional, secondary outcomes of the duration of mechanical ventilation, the length of stay in the ICU and hospital, change in sequential organ failure assessment score, and adverse events were comparable between the two strategies.

As a result, the authors concluded that conservative oxygen therapy strategy did not improve the prognosis of the overall ICU patients. ICU patients with mild to moderate respiratory failure might obtain prognosis benefit from such a strategy without affecting other critical clinical results.

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Chen, XL., Zhang, BL., Meng, C. et al. Conservative oxygen therapy for critically ill patients: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. j intensive care 9, 47 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40560-021-00563-7