CASE REPORT /SHORT REPORT   Open access

Italian Journal of Emergency Medicine 2020 August;9(2):80-6

DOI: 10.23736/S2532-1285.20.00029-4

Copyright © 2020 THE AUTHORS

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

lingua: Inglese

Pneumomediastinum complicating the use of non-invasive ventilation in COVID-19 pneumonia: a short case-series

Sokol BERISHA ¹, Mariastella DIONISI ¹, Mariarita TALIANI ¹, Nabila SAID ¹, Alessandra VINCI ², Francesco BALDUCCI ², Cecilia BECATTINI ², Paolo GROFF ¹ ✉

¹ Emergency Department Observation Unit, Hospital of Perugia, Perugia, Italy; ² Internal, Vascular Medicine and Stroke Unit, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

While knowledge is growing in the world on SARS-Cov2 related disease, few reports are still available about all its possible pleomorphic presentations and complications. Pneumomediastinum, for example, is a condition only sporadically reported so far in COVID-19 pneumonia. In this paper we report of three cases of pneumomediastinum complicating the use of mechanical ventilation for acute hypoxemic respiratory failure due to COVID-19 pneumonia and discuss its possible correlation with the peculiarity of the disease at the pathological level.

KEY WORDS: Coronavirus; Pneumonia; Pneumomediastinum, diagnostic; Noninvasive ventilation