Supportive care for patient with respiratory diseases: an umbrella review

Background Supportive treatment is an important and effective part of the management for patients with life-threatening diseases. This study aims to identify and evaluate the forms of supportive care for patients with respiratory diseases. Methods An umbrella review of supportive care for patient with respiratory diseases was undertaken. We comprehensively searched the following databases: Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), Wanfang Data and CBM (SinoMed) from their inception to 31 March 2020, and other sources to identify systematic reviews and meta-analyses related to supportive treatments for patient with respiratory diseases including Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and influenza. We assessed the methodological quality using the AMSTAR score and the quality of the evidence for the primary outcomes of each included systematic review and meta-analysis. Results We included 18 systematic reviews and meta-analyses in this study. Most studies focused on the respiratory and circulatory support. Ten studies were of high methodological quality, five studies of medium quality, and three studies of low quality. According to four studies extracorporeal membrane oxygenation did not reduce mortality in adults [odds ratio/relative risk (OR/RR) ranging from 0.71 to 1.28], but two studies reported significantly lower mortality in patients receiving venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation than in the control group (OR/RR ranging from 0.38 to 0.73). Besides, monitoring of vital signs and increasing the number of medical staff may also reduce the mortality in patients with respiratory diseases. Conclusions Our overview suggests that supportive care may reduce the mortality of patients with respiratory diseases to some extent. However, the quality of evidence for the primary outcomes in the included studies was low to moderate. Further systematic reviews and meta-analyses are needed to address the evidence gap regarding the supportive care for SARS, MERS and COVID-19.