Back to Homepage
So what exactly are the different medication therapies that patients in the ICU can receive while they are on mechanical ventilation? There’s a couple of pathways. We first have remdesivir, which is an antiviral agent. This agent, in theory, can target the COVID-19 virus itself and potentially neutralize the virus and hopefully prevent spread to other cells. In addition to that, we have steroids or decadron. Steroids are anti-inflammatory medications, and they reduce the body’s own inflammatory response to the virus itself. A lot of times with COVID-19, the body’s own inflammatory response overwhelms the pulmonary and lung system itself, leading to respiratory distress. Steroids hopefully will decrease the patient’s own immune response. And then we have other agents, including convalescent plasma, which is plasma received from patients who have already been treated for COVID-19 infection. The plasma from these patients have antibodies that, similar to remdesivir, hopefully target the virus itself, causing suppression and neutralization of the further viral spread in the patient’s body. And then other supportive measures include anticoagulation medications, or blood thinner medications. For somewhat unclear reasons still, COVID-19 infection has a propensity towards both microvascular, or small blood vessel, and macrovascular, larger blood vessel clot, and anticoagulation medications help prevent this. Exact dosing of anticoagulation is still very much debatable at this time and we don’t have consensus, but unless the anticoagulation is contraindicated, this is another medication that is provided for the patient.
