April 14, 2020 / By Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent
(CNN) – On Friday, Dr. Mangala Narasimhan received an urgent call. A man in his 40s with Covid-19 was in a dire situation, and her colleague wanted her to come the intensive care unit at Long Island Jewish Hospital to see if he needed to be put on life support.
Before I come over there, Narasimhan told the other doctor, try turning the patient over onto his stomach and see if that helps.
Narasimhan didn’t need to go the ICU. The flip worked.
Doctors are finding that placing the sickest coronavirus patients on their stomachs — called prone positioning – helps increase the amount of oxygen that’s getting to their lungs.
“We’re saving lives with this, one hundred percent,” said Narasimhan, the regional director for critical care at Northwell Health, which owns 23 hospitals in New York. “It’s such a simple thing to do, and we’ve seen remarkable improvement. We can see it for every single patient.”
“Once you see it work, you want to do it more, and you see it work almost immediately,” added Dr. Kathryn Hibbert, director of the medical ICU at Massachusetts General Hospital.
