In this systematic review and meta-analysis, our study found that HFNC was not superior to NIV in reducing the reintubation rate in patients at high risk of extubation failure, but the mortality rate was significantly lower in the HFNC group than in the NIV group. Three studies[9, 30, 33] reported adverse events with no complications in the HFNC group. There were, however, mild complications in the NIV group, such as skin breakdown, facial skin ulcer, and abdominal distension.
Although we found HFNC lowering the reintubation rate in patients at high risk of extubation failure was not superior to the NIV, a favorable effect cannot be neglected. Furthermore, no adverse events were reported in the HFNC group across all trials. Compared to NIV, HFNC precisely regulates FiO2 by providing moist oxygen flow, which not only helps the patient to remove excreta and promotes effective gas exchange, but also prevents the patient from open-mouth breathing, which can lead to lung damage and bloating due to respiratory effort, and makes him/her feel relatively more comfortable.[35]. In addition, there may be some correlation between the rate of reintubation and other outcomes in this study, so respiratory rate and length of hospitalization were also not statistically significant when comparing the two groups of patients. However, in contrast, NIV patients had shorter ICU stays with narrower 95% confidence intervals, although the outcome was not statistically significant. This may be due to the increased rate of reintubation in the HFNC group leading to an increase in their length of hospitalization. This could be the reason why the guidelines recommend the use of NIV more to reduce the rate of reintubation[6].
A notable disparity in mortality was observed in this system review and meta analysis, which was in line with the findings in the recently published studies[9–11, 29, 31]. Nevertheless, in previous meta-analyses[20, 22, 36], it was insignificant between two groups. The difference may be that fewer studies were included in previous meta-analyses to compare the effect of receiving NIV or HFNC alone and high heterogeneity was also observed. Furthermore, previous research studies have also demonstrated that compared to receiving NIV, the implementation of HFNC + NIV contributes to a decrease in reintubation rate among patients at high risk of extubation failure[32], but the mortality rate increased[22].
NIV + HFNC used interchangeably may be an effective strategy to reduce reintubation rate after extubation[37]. However, in comparison to the solitary utilization of NIV, the question of whether the combination of NIV + HFNC provides greater benefits for the high-risk extubation failure population, or if it may potentially lead to an increase in adverse outcomes, remains to be determined through further multicenter studies. At the same time, consideration also needs to be given to the economic burden on patients post-hospital admission with a combination of NIV and HFNC.
Several reasons may explain the higher mortality of NIV. First, among the included studies, most trials used NIV prophylactically, while three studies[11, 30, 34] started NIV at the time of respiratory failure or the emergence of a window for pulmonary infection control. Using NIV to treat respiratory insufficiency after extubation (post-extubation failure) was not recommended in an international consensus conference[38]. Moreover, two RCTs[39, 40] showed that no benefit could get from the use of NIV after respiratory failure to avoid reintubation. Reintubation of patients with respiratory failure after using NIV leads to delayed intubation, and the time between extubation and reintubation is an independent risk factor for increased mortality in reintubated patients[41]. In the study by Ferrer et al[7], respiratory failure was the most common cause of death in these patients, and the early application of NIV is effective in avoiding respiratory failure and reducing extubation failure in high-risk patients.. Therefore, prophylactic use of NIV is important for the prognosis of people at high risk of extubation[7, 42]. Second, most of the people at high risk for extubation failure in the studies included in this paper had respiratory diseases such as COPD, and severe pneumonia. These respiratory conditions may result in inadequate secretion clearance or narrowing of the airway[43]. The use of NIV in patients with respiratory disease may lead to airway obstruction or infection, as the sealed environment of oxygenation using a mask may cause sputum to accumulate and not be easily expelled, and respiratory failure may be induced by obstruction of the upper airway, which may lead to failure of the NIV treatment. The study of Liu et al[31]similarly reached a consistent conclusion, demonstrating a higher mortality rate in the NIV group (14.3%) compared to the HFNC group (9.1%) among patients with sputum volume ≥ 20 mL within 24 hours. Moreover, the inability to spontaneously remove secretions is considered a relative contraindication for NIV[44], especially in patients with impaired consciousness and weak cough reflex[45], careful consideration and individualized assessment are crucial before initiating NIV[46]. Therefore, patients at high risk of extubation failure with respiratory disease need to carefully consider to use of NIV.
Concerning the risk of bias assessment, the main issue concerned the blinding. Patients are aware of the implementation of interventions post-enrollment, which could not impact outcome assessment. As the time of reintubation is beyond the control of patients, with the majority of trials[9, 10, 29, 30, 32, 34]indicating that the decision for reintubation is based on pre-established criteria. In most included studies, apart from the different of intervention of ventilation[29, 30, 32, 34], both intervention and control groups received consistent medical management. Although one study[33] that did not employ randomization in grouping was considered low quality, the rest were considered high quality. Furthermore, among the articles included, only one is a multicenter conducted study[30], and some studies[10, 29, 33] were small sample sizes, potentially introducing bias into the results.
Strengths and limitations
We used two approaches[38] (find outlier and influence cases ) to avoid one or more studies with extreme effect sizes from distorting our pooled effect estimate and certifying if the pooled effect estimate we found is robust. Eventually, we did not find outliers, but the studies of Hernández et al[9] and Liu et al[31] may be regarded as potentially relevant cases since they contribute heavily to the overall heterogeneity in our meta-analysis. Therefore, we conducted and reported the results and pooled estimates in which both studies were excluded. The results were robust, and further sensitivity analysis was approved (see in the Supplementary materials), indicating that no individual study had impacted the overall results.
There are several limitations in this study. First, only a few studies reported the results separately based on the diagnosis of the population, such as COPD, acute heart failure, and the change of patient’s arterial blood gas. Therefore, we were not able to assess the impact of HFNC on patient outcomes with concrete disease. Second, only interventions with HFNC and NIV were included in this meta-analysis, thus the results might not be generalizable to other intervention protocols. Further studies could try a program that combines HFNC and NIV, merging the strengths of each measure to maximize its effect.