Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. May 16, 2021; 9(14): 3385-3393
Published online May 16, 2021. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i14.3385
Almitrine for COVID-19 critically ill patients – a vascular therapy for a pulmonary vascular disease: Three case reports
Pierre Huette, Osama Abou Arab, Vincent Jounieaux, Mathieu Guilbart, Mohamed Belhout, Guillaume Haye, Hervé Dupont, Christophe Beyls, Yazine Mahjoub
Pierre Huette, Osama Abou Arab, Mathieu Guilbart, Guillaume Haye, Hervé Dupont, Christophe Beyls, Yazine Mahjoub, Department of Anaesthesia and Critical Care, Amiens Hospital University, Amiens 80000, France
Vincent Jounieaux, Department of Respiratory Medicine, Amiens Hospital University, Amiens 80000, France
Mohamed Belhout, Department of Pharmacy, Amiens Hospital University, Amiens 80000, France
Author contributions: Huette P, Abou Arab O, Beyls C and Mahjoub Y conceived the study and drafted the manuscript; Jounieaux V, Guilbart M, Belhout M, Haye G and Dupont H participated in data acquisition and helped to draft the manuscript.
Informed consent statement: Local institutional review board waived the need for written informed consent; data storage was authorized by national licensing authority (CNIL PI2020_843_0026). Patients and/or next of kin were informed of the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Pierre Huette, MD, Doctor, Department of Anaesthesia and Critical Care, Amiens Hospital University, Avenue Rene-Laennec, Amiens 80000, France. huette.pierre@chu-amiens.fr
Received: November 17, 2020
Peer-review started: November 17, 2020
First decision: December 28, 2020
Revised: December 31, 2020
Accepted: January 25, 2021
Article in press: January 25, 2021
Published online: May 16, 2021
Processing time: 163 Days and 8.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: It has been hypothesized that increased pulmonary blood flow associated with impaired hypoxic vasoconstriction may lead to significant intrapulmonary shunt that plays a major role in coronavirus disease 2019 related severe hypoxia. In this report, three coronavirus disease 2019 patients with refractory hypoxemia were treated with continuous infusion of almitrine, a specific pulmonary vasoconstrictor. Almitrine infusion enhanced oxygenation of patients with severe coronavirus disease 2019 related acute respiratory distress syndrome without any change in pulmonary artery pressures and right ventricular function.