Effectiveness and safety of awake prone positioning in COVID-19-related acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure: an overview of systematic reviews

To evaluate and summarize systematic reviews of the effects and safety of awake prone positioning for COVID-19-related acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure. A comprehensive search was conducted on PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CNKI, CSPD, CCD and CBM from their inception to March 28, 2023. Systematic reviews (SRs) of awake prone positioning (APP) for COVID-19-related acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure in adults were included. Two reviewers screened the eligible articles, and four reviewers in pairs extracted data and assessed the methodological quality/certainty of the evidence of all included SRs by AMSTAR 2 and GRADE tools. The overlap of primary studies was measured by calculating corrected covered areas. Data from the included reviews were synthesized with a narrative description. A total of 11 SRs were included. The methodological quality of SRs included 1 “High”, 4 “Moderate”, 2 “Low” and 4 “Critically low” by AMSTAR 2. With the GRADE system, no high-quality evidence was found, and only 14 outcomes provided moderate-quality evidence. Data synthesis of the included SR outcomes showed that APP reduced the risk of requiring intubation (11 SRs) and improving oxygenation (3 SRs), whereas reduced significant mortality was not found in RCT-based SRs. No significant difference was observed in the incidence of adverse events between groups (8 SRs). The corrected covered area index was 27